Gunslinger
by Elspeth1
Summary: Out on the frontier, the line between justice and vengeance can grow as fine as the line between right and wrong—or between friendship and love. It’s a long road from Dodge to Tombstone.
1. Frontier Marshal

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual historical figures and events, and partially based on our own hours of twisted fantasies produced by seeing _Tombstone_ one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.  
**Posted By:** **Elspethdixon** and **Pixyofthestyx**  
**Ships:** The list goes on and on, but only Doc Holliday/Kate Elder appears in this chapter.  
**Warnings:** This instalment of Gunslinger contains profanity, drinking, and violence. It does not contain hot sex. Sorry.

**Gunslinger: Dodge City**

_Part One: Frontier Marshal._

When six men hold up a train just outside of town, it tends to make people nervous, and nervous people, as Marshal Bat Masterson was fond of pointing out, tended to be less peaceable then relaxed ones. Therefore, it was incumbent upon Dodge City's thinly-stretched peacekeeping force to sally forth and round up the bandits. Also, it was more interesting than enforcing gambling ordinances and corralling troublesome drunks.

Of course, they hadn't managed to lay hold of all of the bandits at once. That would have been too easy. There always had to be one who managed to get away.

Naturally, as one of the newest of Dodge City's collection of lawmen, Wyatt was the one chosen to go looking for Dirty Dave Rudabaugh. Rudabaugh ( _not_ Rutabaga, as Morgan and Bat insisted upon calling him), was the last member of the group of train robbers remaining at liberty. He had disappeared several days ago into the vast expanse of the frontier. God alone knew where.

Wyatt certainly didn't know where. He had tracked Rutabaga (Christ, now they had him doing it!) to a small town in the Texas panhandle, but there, the trail had gone cold. No one in town seemed to remember speaking to him, seeing him, or even hearing about him, save for one man in the livery stable who remembered him riding in. Unfortunately, that was about the only thing the livery man remembered. He couldn't even tell Wyatt which way Rudabaugh had turned when he left the stable.

The bartender at the Cosmopolitan Saloon was even less helpful. "Rudabaugh? Dave Rudabaugh? No, no, I don't think there's any as goes by that here. Tall man, was he?"

"No." Wyatt shook his head. "More average-sized. Balding a bit." He gestured at the top of his own, thankfully not balding, head in illustration. "Wears a brown Stetson. Or he was when he and his buddies robbed that train up in Edwards County."

"Edwards?" The bartender asked. The man's own reddish-brown hair, Wyatt noticed, was rather thin, and his attempt to disguise this by brushing it sideways across the top of his head was something less then successful. "You're a long ways outta your jurisdiction, Mister… what did you say your name was?"

"Earp," Wyatt repeated, for what was at least the third time. "Wyatt Earp. I'm a town marshal in Dodge City?" He was starting to doubt that this man could even remember the names and faces of his regular customers, let alone a passing stranger like Rudabaugh.

"Ain't that way over in Kansas?"

"Yes. The same place as Edwards County," Wyatt said as calmly as he could. "Are you sure you sure haven't seen Rudabaugh? It would only have been a day or so ago."

"Listen, Mr. Earp." The bartender was beginning to sound annoyed. Wyatt sympathized. "I serve maybe twenty, thirty people a day. I can't be expected to remember every cowhand or farmer that comes through here. You might try the saloon across the street. Shanssey over there sees less business than I do."

Considering the state of the Cosmopolitan, which was nearly empty except for a few dust-covered cattle drovers at the end of the bar and a desultory poker game going on in the back corner, Shanssey's place must be in desperate straights indeed. Of course, it was the middle of the day. Wyatt supposed things might liven up a bit after dark.

"Have you tried the bath house?" the bartender asked, clearly trying to be at least somewhat helpful. "There's some men like to get clean after they come in from a long ride. Maybe he went there before going to Shanssey's."

"I don't think so," Wyatt said. "I've seen Rudabaugh. Smelled him, too." He pushed a few coins across the bar, even though he hadn't gotten what he'd come for, and walked out through the Cosmopolitan's batwing doors to look for Shanssey's.

He didn't have to look far. Considering that one could pretty much see from one end of town clear to the other, he hadn't really expected to, but Shanssey's establishment turned out to be conveniently located right across the street from his rival.

Shanssey's was a bit more crowded than the Cosmopolitan, with a row of patrons lining the polished oak bar. At one table near the front, a dark-haired woman whose dress showed off her ample charms to considerable advantage was entertaining a pair of cowhands. Both looked slightly cleaner than the average drover, and were obviously competing for the lady's attentions.

Shanssey himself was a short, weedy-looking man with impressively curled dark hair and a snub nose. When Wyatt stepped up to the bar, he set down the mug he was cleaning and hurried over, wash rag still in his hand. Wyatt nodded amiably at him, and Shanssey responded with a cheerful grin.

"Can I get ya something?"

"A beer. Whatever you've got on stock." Perhaps ordering something would help jog the man's memory.

"Coming right up." Shanssey reclaimed the freshly cleaned mug and filled it from one of the barrels stacked behind the bar. "I don't think I've seen you around before. You just get in today?"

"Yeah." Wyatt picked up the mug of beer and took a brief sip. It wasn't bad, though the brew served at the Long Branch saloon, back in Dodge, was better. "I'm a town marshal out of Dodge City. I'm looking for a man called Dave Rudabaugh. Medium height, kind of balding a bit. He and some friends of his robbed a train back in Kansas."

"Don't know about Rudabaugh, but we did have a man calling himself Dave come through last night. He played a few hands with Dr. Holliday. Lost a fair amount of money for a trailhand, now I think of it. They usually only have that much cash to blow after the big cattle drives come through in the spring."

"Where might I find this Holliday?"

"Oh, you don't want go looking for him," one of the men at the bar volunteered. "He's bad news. They say he shot a man up in Oklahoma. Or maybe it was New Mexico. I forget."

"I heard it was two men, down in East Texas," another drinker, clearly more inebriated than the first, spoke up. He gestured expansively with his mug, leaving a trail of spilled beer on the bar. "Shot 'em both over a game of poker and then sat back down to finish his drink. He's deadly on the draw, faster than a snake."

"And just how would you be knowing that?' Shanssey asked. "Have you ever seen him shoot anybody?" He swiped at the spilled beer with his wash rag. "Doc's got a room here, but you can find him playing poker at the Cosmopolitan right now. If he's not there after all, come back and talk to Katie over there." He nodded towards the dark-haired woman, who was currently lounging on the knee of one of her admirers, to his companion's obvious jealousy. "She keeps company with him."

"Right. What's this Doc fellow look like?" Wyatt asked. It was possible that, if he really was a killer, talking to this Holliday might cause more trouble than it was worth. Many men with blood on their hands didn't take kindly to lawmen, especially if they were fleeing a murder charge in Oklahoma.

"Skinny little bastard with a reb accent." The drinker who had spoken first threw his two cents in again. "S'pposed to be a surgeon or something."

"Dr. Holliday is a dentist," Shanssey corrected him. "He's maybe a little shorter than you," he added, gesturing up at Wyatt's six-foot-plus frame. "Thin, with longish, sandy-colored hair. Used to have a mustache, 'til Kate shaved it off."

"Right here in the bar room, when he was passed out, day before last," the drunk man said. "Though he was going to kill her when he come to."

"Sounds like he walks around killing people everywhere," Wyatt commented.

"Yeah." The drunk nodded. "He's a cold-blooded sonuvabitch. Kill you as soon as look at you. You here to arrest him for something?"

"Not yet," Wyatt said, "but the day's still young."

He paid Shanssey for the beer and headed for the door, leaving the still mostly-full mug behind him on the bar.

As he stepped out into the street, Wyatt fished in his coat pocket for the marshal's badge Bat had handed over to him the week before. It was new enough to still be untarnished, and sparkled brightly in the afternoon sun as he pinned it to his lapel. Maybe now the bartender would be able to remember where Kansas was.

This time, the Cosmopolitan was even more sparsely populated than before. The poker game in the corner had dwindled down to two people, one of them a portly man in a bowler hat who clearly wasn't Holliday. Which made the sickly-looking one with the long, blond hair… Why did the ones with the most vicious reputations always look so harmless? Hardened killers really ought to wear a brand or something.

Wyatt strolled slowly to the back of the saloon, doing his best to avoid looking like a lawman there to arrest somebody for a murder back in East Texas. Or Oklahoma. Or New Mexico. Or wherever.

The man in the bowler, who wore the hat with considerably less panache than Bat Masterson did, took one look at Wyatt walking towards him and fled, leaving cards, whisky glass, and money behind on the table.

Holliday continued to lounge in his chair, glaring at Wyatt with bloodshot blue eyes. "You, sir, have interrupted my poker game." His voice was husky, slightly hoarse, with a pronounced Southern accent. Holliday leaned forward and raked the bowler-hatted man's abandoned cash toward himself with one bony hand. "Did you want something, or have you come here purely to irritate me?"

Something told Wyatt that this was going to be a very long conversation. He righted the departed man's fallen chair and sat down, watching as Holliday gathered his own and his erstwhile opponent's money into a neat little pile. "I could make myself irritating. I hear you've killed lots of men, or maybe just one man in a lot of places. You sound like the sort of person a lawman ought to be interested in. But as it happens, I'm interested in the character you played poker with last night."

"Which one?" Holliday drawled, raising his eyebrows slightly as if to indicate utter contempt for Wyatt's intelligence. "I play poker with a lot of people. It's what you might call my trade." He tapped the stack of printed greenbacks against the table to line the edges up and tucked the money inside his coat.

Wyatt launched into the description once more. By the time he'd gotten to "balding," Holliday was smirking.

"I might have played a hand or so with someone answering that description. Maybe." He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, getting it clear of his face. It was a disconcertingly feminine gesture. "However, I make it a point not to converse with lawmen. If that's all?" Clearly, Wyatt was now expected to leave.

Wyatt leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "There's this thing called 'obstructing justice,' Dr. Holliday. An educated fellow like you might of heard of it."

"You seem to have me at a disadvantage when it comes to names." He waved a hand at Wyatt's chair. "Why don't you sit down and introduce yourself."

Somehow, even though the man was clearly doing his level best to be annoying, Holliday managed to make Wyatt feel as if _he _were the one being rude. "Wyatt Earp," he said. "Deputy Town Marshal for Dodge City."

"I think I've heard of you. Didn't you used to be a marshal up in Wichita?" As he spoke, Holliday picked up the half empty bottle of whisky that rested by his elbow and poured himself a glass. He didn't offer Wyatt any.

Wyatt nodded, but didn't volunteer any more information. Holliday, after all, was the one who was supposed to be answering the questions.

After a long moment of silence, which Wyatt pointedly did not break, Holliday downed the glass of whiskey—coughing slightly at strength of it—and nodded at Wyatt, miming tipping a hat as if the two of them had just run into one another on the street. "Dr. John Henry Holliday. Most folks just call me Doc."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, _Doc," _Wyatt said, reaching an arm out and taking hold of the bottle of whiskey. He leaned back in his chair, holding the bottle at a slant to read the label. "Let me guess, you didn't buy this here?"

"However could you tell?" Holliday was imitating Wyatt, right down to the arm draped over the back of his chair. Somehow, he managed to make the pose mocking. "The good bartender here adds rattlesnake venom to his liquor for that extra kick. I'm rather fond of my eyesight." He gestured negligently at the bottle in Wyatt's hand. "May I have that back, please?"

"There anything you have to tell me about Dave Rudabaugh?"

"Rudabaugh?" Holliday parroted. "I believe I remember him. Unwashed cowhand with deep pockets?" He smirked slightly, though his eyes still followed the whiskey bottle, which Wyatt was now twirling slowly back and forth through his fingers. "I assume his crime is larger than mere lack of hygiene?"

"He robbed a train in Kansas."

"That would explain how someone of his poker playing abilities got his hands on that much cash. It was clear he hadn't won it at cards."

Holliday opened his mouth to say something else, but whatever it was was lost as the distinctive sound of breaking glass came from the street outside.

"You low-down sonuvabitch!"

Wyatt was all ready on his feet and heading for the door, whiskey bottle still in his right hand. He heard Holliday climbing to his feet behind him, but ignored the noise, his attention already focused on the fight outside.

"Bastard! I'll kill you fer that !" the more bedraggled of the two combatants was howling. Clearly, he had been the one to take a trip through Shanssey's front window. He launched himself at his opponent, throwing a punch to the side of his jaw.

The other man dodged the punch and grabbed him around the waist, trying to wrestle him to the ground without noticeable success. "She's mine!" he snarled. "I already paid her."

"Where are you going?" Holliday demanded. He grabbed Wyatt by the elbow, halting him just outside the Cosmopolitan's doors.

Wyatt yanked his arm free without breaking stride. "Stay here," he said. He didn't bother looking back to see whether Holliday obeyed. The two trailhands from Shanssey's saloon were brawling in the middle of the street, while Shanssey himself stood on the sidewalk, watching silently. Kate leaned against the doorframe behind him, looking bored.

Wyatt reached the two fighters in three long strides, reaching out and latching on to the nearest man's shoulder with his left hand. He spun the man around, ducking the fist thrown at his face, and brought Holliday's whiskey bottle down neatly against the back of his head.

The man went down in a shower of whiskey and broken glass. His opponent drew back a foot to kick him and then, seeing the jagged-edged neck of the bottle still clutched in Wyatt's hand, thought better of it. He lowered his foot and his fists and stood quietly, all the fight gone out of him.

"What the hell's going on here?" Wyatt asked, looking up to where Shanssey stood in the shade of the saloon's overhanging roof.

"The lads had a disagreement-" Shanssey started to explain.

"That was mine," Holliday interrupted, voice rising nearly an octave in aggrieved protest. He followed Wyatt across the street, and was now standing immediately behind him, glaring up at him with his hands fisted at his sides. "It was _very_ expensive."

"Oh, sorry." Wyatt held the broken remnants of the bottleneck out toward Holliday. "Do you want it back?"

For one long moment, he was sure the other man was going to hit him. Holliday had gone rigid, eyes narrowed. Somehow, despite being a good six inches shorter and at least sixty pounds lighter than Wyatt, he managed to look intimidating. Until his lips curved slowly upwards into small smile. "No, he needed the bath anyway." Holliday glanced down to where Wyatt's victim sprawled amidst a scattering of glass shards, blood and whiskey dripping down his face. "Just for the record," he told the man, "she's mine."

Kate chose that moment to saunter slowly over, coming to stand next to Holliday. She placed one hand on his shoulder and the other on his elbow, draping herself against his side. "I told you I had company tonight," she said. She had a slight foreign accent, something Wyatt couldn't place.

"Bitch," the fallen man spat, one hand pressed to the back of his head.

Holliday kicked him. He turned back to Wyatt. "Well then, where were we?"

"You were telling me how Rudabaugh can't play poker," Wyatt said.

"Ah yes." Holliday gestured with his free hand—the one not currently occupied with Kate—at the doorway of Shanssey's. "What do you say we continue this conversation indoors?"

As the three of them stepped up onto the sidewalk and entered the saloon, Wyatt caught sight of the town's sheriff, being led down the street by one of the men Wyatt had spoken to in Shanssey's earlier. Satisfied that things were being taken care of, Wyatt followed Holliday and Kate to a table in the back corner. Like many gamblers and gunfighters, Holliday seemed to prefer sitting with his back against a wall.

"Your train robber didn't seem too worried about being caught." Holliday paused, standing slightly bent over with one hand on the back of a chair.

"What makes you say that?" Wyatt asked.

Instead of answering, Holliday began coughing, a deep, wracking cough that had him nearly doubled over, one arm wrapped around his chest.

"Are you all right?"

Holliday nodded, still coughing, and waved a hand in Wyatt's direction, indicating that he was fine and Wyatt should sit down and leave him alone. Kate laid a hand on his shoulder for a moment and headed for the bar, leaving the gambler to collapse, wheezing, into his seat.

"If Rudabaugh felt he had time to spend half the night losing money to me, he wasn't too concerned about pursuit," Holliday said, with a last, half-muffled cough. "He certainly wasn't worried about flashing money around. Like your friend in the street, he attempted buy Kate's favors. She turned out to be more expensive than he'd assumed, and he went away to sulk."

"You know, technically, that money belongs to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe," Wyatt said.

"A corrupt and despotic example of Yankee capitalism. And technically, that whiskey bottle belonged to me."

"Yeah, thanks for the loan."

Holliday smiled slightly, and returned to the subject of Rudabaugh. "He said something about riding south, but he didn't say where to." As he spoke, Kate came back to the table, a glass of whiskey in each hand. She set one down on the table and handed the other to Holliday, who took it without looking and drained it in one swallow. "You might be able to catch him if you're lucky."

"Thanks." Wyatt stood, offering his chair to Kate, and extended his hand to Holliday. Holliday looked at it for a second, but didn't take it.

"I don't shake hands," he said. Holliday saluted Wyatt with the empty shot glass. "Happy hunting."

Wyatt grinned. "If you ever come through Dodge, I'll buy you a new bottle of whiskey."

"Bourbon would be better."

"We'll see." Wyatt nodded at Holliday, put his hat back on, and headed for the door. There might still be enough daylight left to catch Rudabaugh on the road.

* * *

Nearly a week later, Wyatt, dusty and travel sore, rode back into Dodge, still Rudabaugh-less. His brothers were waiting for him in the marshal's office that formed the front half of the town jail. Well, Virgil was waiting. Morgan was occupied with Dolores Conklin, the grocer's wife. 

"The dreadful creature barks and howls all night long. Surely, there must be some law forbidding people to keep loud dogs!" She had Morgan cornered behind the room's only desk, and was waving one finger at him threateningly. "I insist that you do something immediately."

"Hey, Wyatt." Virgil nodded at him from his position by the cell doors, safely out of Mrs. Conklin's range. "How was your trip?"

"I tracked Rudabaugh down into Texas, but I lost the trail a couple days across the state line," Wyatt said, looking at the floor. He hated when one of them got away, especially when he'd invested so much time and effort in trying to bring them in.

"Ma'am, really, I can't arrest him for that," Morgan protested. "People don't have much of a say in how loud their dogs bark."

Virgil ignored Mrs. Conklin's indignant response with the ease of considerable practice. "That's where Bat caught up with him," he said, gesturing at a man huddled under a blanket in the cell farthest from the door. "He brought him in yesterday."

Wyatt suppressed the urge to walk over to Rudabaugh's cell and beat his head repeatedly against the bars. Or maybe just beat Rudabaugh. "I spent over a week looking for him in every flyspeck of a town between here and the Texas panhandle," he said.

"Yes, I know. Sorry about that, Wyatt." Virgil shrugged. "We could have used you here, too." He nodded toward the desk, where Morgan was still attempting to placate Mrs. Conklin. Wyatt was sure that beneath his mustache, Virgil was smiling ever so slightly.

"Realty, Deputy, I don't know what this town pays you for." Mrs. Conklin drew herself up to her full height, somehow managing to loom over Morgan even though he was nearly as tall as Wyatt.

"Virge, if you need me for anything, I'll be in the saloon." Wyatt ducked out of the jail, careful to give Mrs. Conklin a wide berth. As he walked down the street toward the Long Branch saloon, he could hear her voice drifting out of the jail behind him.

"Rest assured, my husband will be hearing about this!"

The Long Branch was like a cheerful, brightly lit oasis after the dusty, dimly lit saloons of Texas. The walls were covered with paintings and murals, including Wyatt's personal favorite, a mostly nude woman reclining on a sofa—or maybe it was a chariot, he had never been entirely sure—being pulled though the air by two horses. Bat called her Stella.

Damn Bat anyway. Wyatt had been all over hell's half acre looking for Rudabaugh, and the way things had turned out, he might as well have stayed home and saved himself the trouble.

Wyatt had seated himself at the bar and was just beginning to work himself into a really good sulk when he heard someone coming up behind him.

"I believe, sir," said a vaguely familiar voice, "that you owe me a bottle of bourbon."

"It was whiskey," Wyatt replied. He turned and found Doc Holliday standing just behind his bar stool, smiling innocently as if it were perfectly natural for him to be standing in the middle of the Long Branch in Dodge City, Kansas, instead of back in Texas where Wyatt had left him. He was wearing the same green brocade waistcoat he had had on last week, and his long, blond hair was tied back out of his face with what look suspiciously like a ribbon. There was an ivory handled revolver hanging from a shoulder holster on his left side. It looked well used.

"Sit down, Doc," Wyatt said, waving at the bar stool next to him. "I'll buy you a drink."

* * *

The Long Branch saloon really existed, as did that painting. There was no way we could leave something like that out. Look at it this way—at least the horses weren't unicorns. No, the Long Branch saloon was not run by Miss Kitty. We're sorry. (Marshal Dillon doesn't exist either). **

* * *

Authors' note:** This story, co-written by myself and my friend and fellow writer Rosa/pixyofthestyx, is the first segment of the cracked-out-Western-soap-opera-anime-from-hell fic spawned by watching _Tombstone_, _Gunfight at the OK Corral_, _Magnificent Seven_, and a large selection of anime (including _Peacemaker Kurogane_) one time too often. _Tombstone_, we decided, would make a wonderful anime. Because Kate could have gigantic breasts, Wyatt's coat could billow dramatically every time something important was happening, and Doc would have long, pretty hair, as dying of consumption automatically makes you the resident angsty bishonen. 

And since even the historical record seems determined to lead us further and further down the path to damnation by being slashy, there would have to be slash. Unfortunately, since neither of us can write sex, it would only be implied. It would, however, be implied with all of the subtlety that _Gunfight at the O.K. Corral_ uses, which is to say, none at all.

Talking turned into obsessing. Obsessing led to extensive amounts of historical research. Research led to writing. We're sorry. We're very, very sorry.


	2. Once Upon a Time in the West

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Buena Vista Pictures, Paramount Studios, and… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual historical figures and events, and partially based on our own hours of twisted fantasies produced by seeing _Tombstone_ one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.  
**Posted By:** **Elspethdixon** and **Pixyofthestyx** (once again, being co-written)  
**Ships:** Mentions of Virgil Earp/Allie Earp and Doc/Kate.  
**Warnings:** This instalment of Gunslinger contains profanity, drinking, and violence. It does not contain hot sex. Sorry.

**Gunslinger: Dodge City**

_Part Two: Once Upon a Time in the West._

"So, Wyatt, why's that skinny gambler always following you around?" As he spoke, Bat rotated the rim of his bowler hat through his hands, inspecting it for dust. He was leaning back in the chair behind the jail's desk, his feet resting on top of the ever-growing pile of the Conklins' written complaints.

"He is not following me around." One shared drink over the course of two days did not constitute 'following someone around.'

"He came to Dodge looking for you," Bat said. Clearly he had picked his topic of conversation for the next half-hour or so, and was unwilling to let the subject drop. He brushed at the crown of his hat, removing a speck of dust visible only to himself.

"I'm not the only interesting thing in Dodge," Wyatt said. He straightened from the wall he had been leaning against and began pacing back and forth between the door and the desk. "He's a gambler. Dodge has got to have better play than that little cow town in Texas."

"He's trouble, Wyatt," Bat insisted. "He's killed at least one man that we know about, probably more."

"Well, it's not like you can run him out of town. He hasn't done anything here."

"Yet. When he does, I'm blaming you." Bat swung his feet off the desk and leaned forward to place his hat neatly beside the muddied papers. He nodded toward the jail's one occupied cell. "Do you think Rutabaga's ready to talk?"

"My name's Rudabaugh," the man in question protested. "Bastard," he added, under his breath.

"What was that?" Bat asked cheerfully. "Wyatt, Mr. Rudabaugh here has insulted us." He raised an eyebrow at Wyatt, inviting him to take up his end of the conversation.

Wyatt folded his arms and stared hard at Rudabaugh. "When we want your opinion, we'll ask for it. Until then, unless there's anything you'd like to tell us about those friends of yours, you can keep your mouth shut."

Rudabaugh silently mouthed something that looked suspiciously like "bastard" and turned away to glare at the wall.

Wyatt returned to pacing. He was halfway between the desk and the jail door when Charles Pike, one of the bartenders at the Lady Gay saloon, came in to report a disturbance. Standard procedure amongst Dodge's peacekeepers was that complaints would be attended to by the closest person to the door, or Morgan. There were benefits to being an older brother. Unfortunately, Morgan was off duty, so it was Wyatt who followed Pike south across the railroad tracks to Front Street—South Front Street, not North Front Street, which was on the other side of the tracks—and the Lady Gay.

Ever since Bat's brother Ed had been shot a month ago, the lawmen had been a little uneasy about working south of the tracks—the "deadline" where the city's no-firearms ordinance ran out. Still, a man had to earn his keep.

"So, these Texans come in and start pushing people around, acting like they own the place. People start pushing back. I just hope nobody's drawn down on anyone else while I was gone."

"Who started the fight?' Wyatt asked. He could see the façade of the Lady Gay up ahead, the sound of shouting and the crash of fallen furniture echoing out the front windows.

"A Texan," Pike said.

"Damn." Texans liked shooting things. Wyatt started walking faster.

The first thing Wyatt noticed when he walked into the Lady Gay was Three-Fingers Jack Danver and a strange cowhand rolling around on the floor beating the living daylights out of each other. The second thing he noticed was Doc Holliday standing at the bar, calmly watching the fight in the saloon's long glass mirror. He turned as Wyatt entered and saluted him with his shot glass.

Several of the saloon's other patrons turned as well at Doc's gesture, and at least one shoving match stilled instantly. The two cowhands on the floor fought on, oblivious.

Wyatt drew his gun and thumbed back the hammer, the sound going unnoticed under the noise of the scuffle. Then he pointed the barrel at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.

It worked like a charm. The brawlers froze instantly, staring up at him with wide eyes.

"Both of you," Wyatt said, "get up and come with me."

The two men climbed slowly to their feet, Three-Fingers Jack staring sullenly at the floor. The other one—Wyatt took him to be the Texan—began inching his hand slowly toward his pistol. As the man's fingers began to close around the weapon's butt, Wyatt reversed his own gun and struck the Texan over the head with it. The man let go of the gun and staggered sideways into the nearest table, knocking over a red-faced cowhand's drink.

The red-faced cowhand let out an outraged yell and jumped to his feet, glaring at both Wyatt and the Texan. "You flea-bitten sonuvabitch, you spilled my drink!"

"Yes, he does that," Doc said dryly. He frowned at Wyatt, and added, "Couldn't you have turned up a few minutes later? My money was on the Texan."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Doc." Wyatt holstered his gun, then turned to Three-Fingers Jack—who had been sidling quietly toward the door—and asked, "You going to come quietly, or do I have to hit you, too?"

Three-Fingers Jack froze, trying to look as if he hadn't been attempting to escape, and mumbled, "Quietly."

"Good." Wyatt grabbed the Texan by the collar and started for the door.

"What about my beer?" the red-faced cowhand demanded.

Wyatt reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a coin, tossing it to Doc, who snatched it from the air. "Pay for his drink."

* * *

The Long Branch saloon tried very, very hard to be sophisticated, and succeeded mainly in looking something like a well-lit bordello. Carefully polished chandeliers hung from the ceiling, keeping uneasy company with the cattle horns mounted over the bar, and on one wall, a naked woman reclined on something Doc thought just might be a flying chaise lounge. It was long, narrow, and crowded with cowhands and gamblers, save for the table Doc was occupying at the moment, which was crowded with lawmen.

Wyatt Earp and his two badge-wearing brothers had been playing cards and talking for the past hour, while Doc sat back and watched them, and won hand after hand. Virgil Earp was a fairly good poker player, but over-cautious, and Morgan was over-eager; bluffing either of them took very little effort. Wyatt, on the other hand, was an opponent worthy of serious attention, when he wasn't being distracted by his brothers' conversation.

"So Wyatt comes into the jail dragging this Texan by the collar," Morgan Earp said, continuing his relation of the afternoon's events. "And Rutabaga takes one look at him and says, 'Marshal, Marshal, you never said he beat people,' and starts talking. He told us _everything_."

"The problem was getting him to stop," Virgil Earp put in. Virgil, Doc had determined, was a man of few words. His younger brother, on the other hand, seemed inordinately fond of them.

"Wyatt scared the information out of him without even touching him," Morgan went on. "Or looking at him."

"Or meaning to," Wyatt added. "I raise." He set another twenty cent piece on the table, nudging it into the middle to join the collection of dimes, half-dimes, and Doc's one lonely gold quarter eagle. Apparently, it was considered rude to bet actual money when playing poker with your brothers.

Doc coughed and set down a twenty cent piece of his own, wondering once again why exactly he had accepted Wyatt's offer of a friendly round of cards at the Long Branch when he could easily have found another game south of the deadline with higher stakes. "Twenty whole cents," he said. "My, you do like to live dangerously."

Wyatt shrugged. "We don't get paid 'til next week."

Virgil regarded his cards grimly, as if they had done something to displease him. "I think I'll fold." He laid his cards face down on the table and settled back in his chair to watch the rest of the round.

Morgan, who, judging by the hint of a smile he was wearing, thought he had a good hand, added his own twenty cents to the pot. "I'm staying in."

And things came back to Wyatt. He studied his hand for a long moment, as if unsure whether the cards he held merited raising the pot again. It was all a show, however. He managed to keep his face straight, but Doc could tell by the way the corners of his eyes crinkled up that Wyatt was trying not to smile. He had a good hand, probably a better one than Morgan. He was going to raise again.

"I'll raise you again, Doc," Wyatt said. This time, he set down a half-dime, looking straight at Doc and smirking. If the betting went around the table again, he'd be putting in pennies.

"I'll see you, and call." Doc laid his own hand on the table and returned Wyatt's smirk.

Wyatt looked from Doc's cards to his own hand, then placed it on the table. Three of a kind. Unfortunately for Wyatt, even three kings didn't beat a full house, especially not one with two aces in it.

Morgan flung his own cards—two pair, plus a seven—onto the table in disgust.

"I believe that money is mine," Doc announced. "All forty cents of it." He began collecting the assortment of pocket change on the table.

"So, that makes three hands in a row now, Holliday," Virgil said. His moustache twitched. "Interesting how this one had all four kings in it." He pointed at the fifth card in Doc's hand, the King of Hearts.

"Yeah," Morgan said, grinning. "I just can't figure out whether it's you cheating, Wyatt cheating, or if you both are and you're just better at it."

Wyatt cuffed him on the back of the head. "Morg. You don't accuse your brother of cheating. It's just not right."

"What about me?" Doc asked. He slouched casually back in his chair and smiled silkily at Morgan. Unfortunately, without a gun to toy with pointedly, the gesture was distinctly less intimidating than it might have been. Morgan didn't even twitch.

Convincing people to take one seriously was extremely difficult when everyone else at the table was over six feet tall, and the bartender had confiscated one's gun when one walked in the door. Morgan had obviously been joking, but it was the principle of the thing. If a man let people get away with implying that he cheated at cards, he was just asking for trouble.

Wyatt smiled again, looking back to Doc. "It's not right and it's not safe."

Morgan blinked. "You mean Bat wasn't just making all that stuff up?" He turned to Doc. "You don't look anywhere near as mean as people say." Clearly, it was intended to be reassuring, rather than vaguely patronizing.

"Don't people also say that Mister Masterson shot a man over some woman down in Texas?"

"Well, yes," Wyatt admitted, "but there's more to the story than that. For one thing, the man shot him first."

"So that's why he carries a cane."

"No," Virgil said, "he carries a cane because he likes it."

Doc had been planning to say something insulting about canes, but couldn't quite manage to get the words out. There was a cough rising inside his chest. He took a deep breath, trying to force it down, but was seized by a spasm of coughing. All of the air in the saloon was suddenly twice as thick as before, rasping at his throat like sand as he struggled to draw another breath.

When the black and gold spots had cleared from his vision and he was able to breathe again, Doc looked up to discover that everyone at the table was staring at him. Wyatt had one hand on his arm, and was peering at him closely, looking concerned.

"You're the dealer, Wyatt," Doc said. "Weren't you going to deal the next hand?" The words hurt the inside of his throat; he coughed once, and reached for his glass. It was empty.

Oh, yes. Kate was otherwise engaged, so there was no one there to keep his glass filled.

Wyatt blinked, then looked away and handed Doc the whiskey bottle. "No, I've lost enough money for the evening. I'd like to go home with something left in my pocket."

"You got five dollars today for arresting those two cowhands," Morgan said. He was still staring at Doc, with the sort of wide-eyed, worried expression that generally made Doc want to slap people and tell them to keep their eyes to themselves. He poured out a shot of whisky and drank it instead. It burned its way down his throat; he liked to imagine that it made his chest feel better.

"Yeah, and Doc just won half of it." Wyatt gathered up the cards and handed them to Doc.

"Good point." Virgil stood up and pushed his chair back in. "I'm going to call it a night. Allie likes it when I come home early."

"Give her a kiss for me, Virge," Wyatt said. He nodded a good-bye, then turned to Morgan, who was also getting up to leave. "You calling it a night, too?"

Morgan shrugged. "I was supposed to take over watching Rudabaugh from Bat a half hour ago."

"No rest for the weary, huh?" Wyatt reached up and punched Morgan in the arm.

"Nope," Morgan said, "your shift starts at dawn." He punched Wyatt on the shoulder, and they both grinned.

And then Wyatt and Doc were alone. Well, as alone as one could be in a crowded saloon.

Doc tapped the deck of cards on the table to line the edges up and shuffled them, the cards sliding easily through his fingers. "Are you sure you don't wish to play another hand?" It was still short of midnight, far too early to return to the Great Western Hotel and attempt to sleep.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Wyatt returned.

"Perfectly." Doc tapped the cards on the table again, and tucked them inside his coat.

Wyatt stood to go, stretching his arms out to the sides and rotating his neck. He really was astonishingly tall, especially when one was looking up at him. It probably proved useful in law enforcement. The broad shoulders didn't hurt either. When the majesty of the law was represented by someone that physically imposing, the law began to seem very majestic indeed. Perhaps that was why all of the Earp brothers seemed to be lawmen.

"You're sure about that game?"

"Maybe some other night. And we're not using your deck anymore." He set his hat back on his head. "Be seeing you."

"Changing decks won't make a difference. I've always been luckier at cards than anything else."

"'Night, Doc." Wyatt gave him the same little nod he'd given Virgil, then headed for the door.

* * *

After the bright lamps of the Long Branch, Front Street seemed even darker than was usual for this time of night. Wyatt stepped out from under the overhang of the saloon's porch and looked up at the sky. The moon had thinned down to a sliver, and the street was lit only by the glow spilling through the saloon windows, which was why it took him a few moments to notice the men lurking in the shadows across the street.

There were three of them standing in front of the darkened windows of the Conklins' store, all of them holding pistols.

"We've been waitin' for you, Marshal," one of them said in a flat Texas drawl. "We think you oughta let Billy go."

"Billy's staying where he is," Wyatt said. He let his right hand drift carefully toward his gun, just in case these idiots tried to start something. "The rest of you can join him if you don't put those guns away and go on home." Three of them. If it actually came down to shooting, at least one of them would likely run away, and he shouldn't have much trouble with just two. Of course, that was probably what Ed Masterson had thought, before those two drunk cowhands had killed him.

"Well, now, what if we don't feel like doing that, Marshal?" The voice came from behind him, and Wyatt twisted around to see another man emerging from the porch of Rath's General Outfitters, a shotgun held to his shoulder with the barrel pointing straight at Wyatt's chest. There was another man behind him, still half-hidden by the shadows. Wyatt couldn't see whether he was carrying a gun or not, but was betting that he was.

"You're all making a big mistake here, boys." Wyatt tried to make his voice sound calm, as if they were having a nice, normal discussion that did not involve guns.

The men by the Conklins' store took a few steps closer, and the one in the middle—the one who had spoken first—cocked his gun. "You think just 'cause you've got that badge you can tell us what to do. Knock people around with that fancy Colt of yours. Well, guess what, Mister Lawman? We've got guns too."

"Yeah," said the man with the shotgun. He was only a few feet away now, and Wyatt recognized him as one of the cowhands from the Lady Gay. He hadn't said anything when Wyatt had hauled his friend away that afternoon, but a few rounds of whiskey had clearly made him bolder. "And we don't need no goddamn badges."

Wyatt closed his hand around the butt of his gun, shifting his weight into a shooting stance. "No one has to get shot here," he said. Somehow, his voice came out steady, even as he tried desperately not to think about how much two barrels worth of buckshot would hurt.

The man still hidden in the shadows fired into the ground by Wyatt's feet, the bullet kicking up a little cloud of dust. The flare of the muzzle blast illuminated his face for a half-second, like a flash of lightning. "No one except you."

There was an endless moment of silence, broken by the sound of two pistols being cocked.

"I beg to differ, gentlemen." Doc Holliday was standing in the doorway of the Long Branch, a revolver in each hand. The light spilling from the saloon backlit him, casting a long shadow across the porch and into the street and glinting off the metal of his guns as he twirled them through his hands, then brought them up to point at the group of men surrounding Wyatt. "Now, which of y'all would like to be first?"

"And who the hell are you?" the man with the shotgun demanded. He swung his gun around to aim it at Doc.

Wyatt took advantage of the fact that all the men were now watching Doc to draw his own gun, thumbing the hammer back slowly to avoid making noise.

"A good Samaritan?" Doc stepped out of the doorway and into the street, his guns still trained on the group's ringleader. He walked past the man with the shotgun as if he wasn't even there. "It looks awfully crowded out here, Wyatt. Are you sure you don't want to take me up on that last game of cards?"

"Hey, you, I asked you a question, Mister Samaritan."

"Maybe you're right, Doc," Wyatt said. "Sounds like a good idea." He turned to the shotgun holder, who was now pointing his weapon somewhere between Doc and Wyatt. "You planning on using that gun, or are you just going to wave it around?"

The man finally noticed that Wyatt's gun was out and pointed at him. "Hey, Harvey, the lawman's got his gun out, too. You gonna hit me with that?"

"Not unless you make me." Wyatt took a careful step sideways toward Doc—and, incidentally, toward the saloon.

"Nonsense," Doc drawled. "You'd only dent your gun. I say we just shoot them." He glance around the cluster of cowhands and smiled. It was one of the most unnerving smiles Wyatt had ever seen, mostly because he had the uneasy conviction that Doc truly was enjoying this, and that he would keep on smiling even as he put bullet after bullet into the men in front of him.

The others must have had the same thought, for several of them were lowering the muzzles of their guns, and the two men on either side of the group's self-appointed leader shifted their feet nervously.

Wyatt crossed the rest of the way over to Doc, feeling the cowhands' eyes boring into his back. "That would be a little noisy for this time of night," he said. "How about we just go play poker?"

"After you." Doc stepped to one side and waved a hand at the saloon door, somehow managing to make the gesture look elegant despite the fact that he was still holding a gun.

Wyatt relaxed the moment they stepped back into the Long Branch, feeling the tension drain out of his shoulders as he slid his gun back into its holster. "Thanks for the back-up, Doc," he said.

Doc shrugged bony shoulders and set his guns back down in the pile at the end of the bar. The two pistols weren't a matched set; one all ivory and gleaming nickel plating and the other ordinary wood and steel. Wait, when exactly had Doc gotten another gun?

"Hey, I thought you just had the one gun when you came in here."

Doc gave the gun with the ivory handle a pat and then looked up at Wyatt, smirking. "A kind gentleman made me a loan of his."

"Did he know he was doing it?"

"He didn't argue."

Wyatt grinned and clapped Doc on the shoulder. "Right. You deal this time. I'm going to go get a drink."

When he got back to the table, drink in hand, Doc was already shuffling the deck.

"So," Doc asked, "what game do you want to play now?"

* * *

notes: The Lady Gay was another real saloon. You can't not use a name like that. Also, Rosa and I think quarter eagles are cool. We should go back to gold and silver money. 


	3. And Die in the West

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Buena Vista Pictures, Paramount Studios, and… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual historical figures and events, and partially based on our own hours of twisted fantasies produced by seeing _Tombstone_ one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.  
**Posted By:** **Elspethdixon** and **Pixyofthestyx** (once again, being co-written)  
**Ships:** The list goes on and on, but only Doc Holliday/Kate Elder appears in this chapter. And the first hints of slashiness, if you squint hard enough.  
**Warnings:** This installment of Gunslinger contains violence, profanity, drinking, rampant altering of historical details to fit our chosen plot, and angst. It does not contain hot sex. Sorry.

**Gunslinger: Dodge City**

_Part Three: And Die in the West._

It was another exciting evening in Dodge. Once again, Wyatt found himself in the Long Branch, nursing a beer and watching Bat and Doc try to ignore each other. Bat was watching the crowd and toying absently with the polished metal knob on the end of his cane, while Doc laid out a game of solitaire. Each of them was determinedly pretending that the other did not exist.

They had been doing this for nearly a week. They had met, glared, and decided not to associate with one another. Which was difficult, since both spent quite a bit of time with Wyatt. It was really sort of funny; the two of them were just alike enough that watching them circle around each other like suspicious stray dogs could be real entertaining.

The two men were nearly the same height, and favored the same sort of fancy, Eastern-style dress—and the same sort of flashy, decorative sidearms. They were practically mirror images as they sat in awkward silence, both in gray coats and brightly colored waistcoats, Bat with his slicked back dark hair and carefully trimmed mustache, and Doc with his ash-blond hair tied back with a black ribbon.

"So," Wyatt said, finally getting tired of the quiet, "where's Kate gotten to?" By this point in the evening, the voluptuous Hungarian was usually busy draping herself over Doc.

"We had a disagreement," Doc said offhandedly. He shrugged, and laid a jack of hearts on top of a queen of clubs. "She'll come back in a few days; she always does."

Wyatt's reply was drowned out by the sound of whooping and hollering from the street, as a pack of—probably drunk—cowhands galloped past. There was a gunshot, and Bat sprang to his feet and clapped his bowler hat back onto his head, clearly intent on charging outside and putting a stop to things. And then a second bullet came through the window.

Bat hit the floor in an instant, along with everybody else in the saloon. Wyatt threw himself out of his chair and dove under the table, fetching up next to Doc. The gambler was propped up on one elbow, one hand pressed to his ribs and the other holding his gun, which seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.

Wyatt cocked an eyebrow at Doc's Colt. "You know you aren't supposed to go heeled north of the deadline."

Doc shook a lock of hair out of his face and started to speak, but was silenced by the sound of another gunshot.

Bat, who was crouched on the floor with one of his guns aimed in the general direction of the window, caught Wyatt's eye and nodded towards the door.

Wyatt rolled to one side, getting clear of the table, and stood, drawing his own gun as he did so. Bat was already on his feet, both guns out now. The two of them reached the door just in time to see the setting sun glinting off the riders' tack as they galloped away.

"Right," Bat said. "We're going after them."

"Why?" Doc had come up behind them and was rubbing at his elbow and wincing. His gun was nowhere in sight. "They're just drunk. Give it a half hour or so and they'll calm down. Or possibly pass out."

"Yeah, that'll be real comforting to all the people they shoot by accident first," Bat snapped. He reholstered his guns and walked out the door, turning in the direction of the livery.

Wyatt put up his own gun and turned to face Doc, who was still standing behind him, looking annoyed. His hair was coming loose of its tie and his coat hanging open. "It's our job, Doc." Wyatt reached out and tugged the front of Doc's coat closed, hiding his shoulder rig and the gun inside it from view.

When he left the saloon, Doc was still staring after him.

* * *

The cowboys were easy enough to follow; they weren't even trying to hide their trail. They were riding fast, leaving the ground behind them a churned up mass of hoof prints that stretched down Front Street toward the Arkansas River. 

Bat dug his spurs into Lady's flanks, and the gray mare broke into a canter. He could hear Wyatt's gelding coming up behind them, hoofbeats echoing off the buildings. The drunk cowhands would almost certainly slow down once they got across the river and into the cattle grazing pasture outside of town—the road ran out there, and even drunk, no cowhand would be stupid enough to risk breaking his mount's leg in a gopher hole. If he and Wyatt kept this pace up, they were bound to catch up with them.

And then they could disarm the brainless bastards and throw them in jail for disturbing the peace, because Bat would be _damned_ if he let anyone get away with shooting at a law officer in Dodge, even by accident.

By the time the two of them reached the toll bridge, Wyatt's horse had drawn even with his. As they hit the first of the wooden planks, Wyatt reined in his gelding, pulling the chestnut around to the left so that Bat was forced to either halt Lady or run into him.

"You seen a bunch of men on horses come through here?" Wyatt leaned over in the saddle to address Jake Bower, the toll collector. God only knew why he bothered to ask. This was the only way they could have gone.

"Damned right." Jake spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the bridge in evident disgust. "Bastards ran right through without paying."

That was all Bat needed to hear. He nudged Lady forward past Wyatt's horse and took off, Wyatt on his heels.

"Hey," Jake yelled after them, "you two owe me fifty cents!"

"We'll pay you later," Wyatt yelled back over his shoulder.

Bat didn't give a damn about Jake's fifty cents; his attention was already on the grove of cottonwood trees that lined the river's south bank. Somewhere on the other side of the trees were the idiots they were after, and once he and Wyatt got through the patch of scrub they might be close enough to see them.

Bat pulled back on Lady's reins as they reached the first of the cottonwoods, slowing her down enough to keep the mare from stumbling over a tree root—or himself from getting knocked out of the saddle by a tree branch. With Lady and Wyatt's gelding slowed to a trot, Bat could make out the sound of voices up ahead.

"Yee-haw!" someone whooped, "Damn, that was fun."

"Did you see how they went for the floor?"

Galloping straight up on them would be just begging to get shot at. Bat had been shot before, and had no intention of repeating the experience. He drew one of his guns, holding it out of sight behind Lady's neck, and nudged her out of the trees at a walk.

"Drop your weapons," he called out. "We're taking you boys in for disturbing the peace."

The cowboys—there were four of them, all still mounted—spun around, as startled as if Bat and Wyatt had sprung up out of the earth. One of them, a man in a dark slouch hat, pulled his horse's head around to face them and reached for his gun.

"Don't be stupid," Wyatt yelled. He had his own gun out, held low at his side. "Just come along quietly; there doesn't need to be any trouble."

"Aw, come on," Slouch Hat said. "We were just havin' fun. We didn't mean nothing by it." He lifted his hand away from his gun belt and held it up, offering them a good-natured grin.

"Well, your fun's over now." Bat nudged Lady forward another step. He was still holding Lady's reins with his left hand, so he used the barrel of his Colt to gesture to the cowhands and then toward the ground. "Take your gunbelts off and put them on the ground."

"Hell with that," shouted one of the men, either dumber or drunker than Slouch Hat. He lifted a gun Bat hadn't seen him draw and fired, the bullet going a good foot over Wyatt's head.

Bat dropped Lady's reins and pulled his other gun, thumbing the hammer back as brought both guns up to bear on the shooter. He pulled both triggers at the same time and the man yelped and dropped flat against his horse's neck, dropping his gun.

Slouch Hat kicked his feet out of the stirrups and flung himself off his horse, hugging the dirt to make as small a target as possible. "Ted, you goddamned idiot!"

One of the other men had a gun out now, too, and was firing randomly in the direction of Bat and Wyatt, all of his bullets going wide—but not by all that much.

If Wyatt were hit—if _he_ were hit—whichever one was left standing would be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, and then they would both be in real trouble. Wyatt could end up bleeding to death in the dust, just like Ed had, blood soaking into the dry ground like water. It had taken Ed forty minutes to die.

"Wyatt, get down!" Bat shouted. He himself was ducked low behind Lady's neck, wishing fervently that they were still back in the cottonwoods where there was at least some kind of cover. Lady's ears were pulled back against her head, and she was shying sideways every time a gun went off, clearly not happy with all the noise and smoke. If they didn't end this soon, she was going to bolt.

Wyatt did not get down but instead took aim at the man shooting at them and fired, just as Bat let off another round from his right-hand Colt. The man dropped his gun, clutched at his chest, and slid slowly off his horse.

The one cowhand still holding a pistol dropped it like a hot poker, raising his hands up palm out. "Don't shoot me!"

Slouch Hat rose to his knees and crawled over to the fallen man, grabbing him by a shoulder and rolling him onto his back. "George? Shit, they shot George!"

Wyatt was staring down at his gun, brows drawn together and jaw set. His gelding was still standing there placidly, looking perfectly at ease. Knowing Wyatt's horse, it was probably too dumb to realize that it ought to have been spooked.

Bat shook his head to try and clear the ringing in his ears and swung down from Lady's back, guns still trained on the men in front of him. "Take your gunbelts off and throw them over here," he ordered. "We're all going back to town. The doctor can take a look at your friend there."

"While the rest of you wait in jail," Wyatt said. He slid his gun back into its holster and dismounted, walking slowly towards the suddenly dispirited little group to collect the gunbelt Slouch Hat had tossed onto the dirt.

"The rest of ya do as he says," Slouch Hat said. He was still kneeling by his friend, holding something—probably a bandana—to the other man's chest.

Ted—still on his horse—and the other cowhand obeyed, unbuckling their gunbelts and tossing them forward onto the ground. Wyatt picked them up and draped them over his arm, then turned back to Bat.

"You can probably put those away now," he said, nodding toward Bat's guns. Bat reholstered his left-hand gun and strode over to the wounded cowhand, his other gun still held firmly in his right hand.

The wounded man was lying flat on his back, a dark stain spreading across the left side of his chest. Slouch Hat was trying to stem the bleeding with his bandana and meeting with little success. Judging by the wet, bubbling sound of the man's breathing, the bullet had hit him in the lung, which meant there was nothing that anyone could do for him.

"Get him up on a horse," Bat ordered. The fourth cowhand dismounted and bent to help Slouch Hat lift their companion up, taking his feet while Slouch Hat held his shoulders. Ted stayed on his horse, looking dazed.

"Somebody's going to have to get up there behind him," Wyatt said. "He looks pretty bad." He stared at the ground as he spoke, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck. "What's his name? Your friend, there."

No one answered for a moment, the cowhands too concerned with hoisting the injured man up onto Slouch Hat's horse to respond. Slouch Hat had climbed back onto his horse and was pulling his friend up to sit in front of him, aided by the fourth cowhand. Standing, he was nearly as tall as Wyatt, and he handed the wounded man up easily. Slouch Hat wrapped one arm around his waist and picked up the horse's reins with the other before finally turning to Wyatt. "Hoy," he said. "His name's George Hoy."

"George Hoy," Wyatt repeated quietly. Wyatt, Bat realized, had never shot a man before. He didn't look as if he were happy about having done so. If Wyatt actually had shot him, that was. It could just as easily be Bat's bullet inside his lung.

It wasn't as though they'd had a choice about shooting him; the man had clearly been willing to kill them, and in those situations, being squeamish about shooting back got you dead.

Somehow, Bat didn't think that would make Wyatt feel any better.

* * *

George Hoy died at four a.m. At least, it was four a.m. according to Wyatt's pocket watch, which had a worn-out spring and was usually a few minutes off. In any case, he was dead before the sun came up. 

His friends, under Bat and Wyatt's supervision, had carried him into the hotel nearest to the jail to await the doctor—the man in the slouch hat, a William Davies, had paid the hotel fee out of his own pocket—but there had been nothing anyone could do. Wyatt's bullet had gone straight through his lung, and he had died coughing up blood. And it must have been Wyatt's bullet, because at that distance, and in that poor light, Bat's bullets had probably gone wide. Bat might be quicker on the draw, but Wyatt's longer-barreled gun had better aim and a better range.

According to Davies, Hoy had been twenty three. Younger than Morgan. And now they'd either be burying him on Boot Hill or sending his body back to Texas in a box, all because he'd been drunk and stupid enough to get himself into a pointless gunfight with Wyatt and Bat.

"Thanks for the back up out there, Wyatt." Bat was slouching in his favorite chair behind the desk, feet up, watching as Wyatt paced back and forth in front of the empty cells. It was late morning, and all of the surviving prisoners had sobered up and been released, their guns now safely locked in the cabinet that stood against the jail's south wall.

"I know it was your first real gunfight," Bat continued. He gave the top of his cane, slightly scratched from its impact with the Long Branch's floor, a swipe with his handkerchief. "You did a good job."

There was something slightly disconcerting about being commended like that by someone closer to his little brother's age than his own. Still, Bat had been involved in more shootings than Wyatt, and ought to know what he was talking about. Hell, he'd fought Apache when he was seventeen, out in Adobe Wells.

"Yeah," Wyatt said. "So good a job that that kid's dead." He stopped pacing, coming to a halt against the jail's wall, and turned to look at Bat.

Bat pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his dark hair, then rolled his neck in a slow circle. Like Wyatt, he had been up all night. Somehow, though, Bat still managed to look immaculate, or least significantly closer to immaculate than Wyatt was feeling at the moment. The button at his collar was undone, but his coat and shirt were still miraculously unwrinkled, despite the previous evening's events. Bat always looked immaculate. "I'd rather bury him than have them be burying me. Or you," he added. He looked up, meeting Wyatt's gaze. "I'm not real fond of funerals."

No, Wyatt realized, he probably wasn't. Not after burying both a lover and a brother. The bullet that had left Bat with that limp had gone straight through his woman before hitting him. Bat never talked about it, but Wyatt got the feeling she had died in his arms. And Ed… The rest of the peace keeping force had gotten there just in time to see Ed collapse. Bat had put a bullet into his remaining attacker and kept on shooting even after the man went down. Wyatt had had to pry the gun out of his hands.

It was no wonder that Bat didn't seem all that shaken by Hoy's death.

"No," Wyatt said. "Neither am I."

"You're not what?" Morgan strode through the jail's door with the buoyant step of a man who had gotten a full night's sleep. Just seeing him made Wyatt feel even more tired than before.

"Morning, Morgan." Wyatt nodded hello, abandoning the conversation with Bat.

Bat himself was climbing stiffly to his feet, favoring his bad leg ever-so-slightly. "Hello, Morgan. Wyatt, why don't you take off and get some sleep. I'll fill Morgan in on how things stand. And then I'm going to bed, and God help the person who wakes me up before dinnertime."

"Yeah, Wyatt, go home," Morgan said. "You've earned it." He grinned, and clapped Wyatt on the shoulder as Wyatt walked out the door.

"So," Morgan's voice followed him out into the street, "how's that cowhand the two of you shot?"

Wyatt's eyes were gritty with lack of sleep, but somehow the thought of bed wasn't that appealing. Though it wasn't his responsibility at the moment, he started making a slow circuit of the town, watching as people went about their business, shopping and talking. By daylight, Dodge was completely different from the town it became after dark. The Conklins' store was open and bustling, for once doing almost as much business as Rath's General Outfitters across the street. The blacksmith near the train depot was shoeing a horse, over the horse's foot-stomping, head-tossing protests.

South of the tracks, the streets were nearly empty; few people were interested in saloons and dancehalls during the day. Wyatt was nearly level with the Great Western Hotel before he saw or heard any signs of life.

When he heard the first gun shot, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Gun in hand, Wyatt dashed for the empty lot behind the hotel. He really, really didn't want to have to shoot anybody else today.

Except this time it wasn't a bunch of Texans trying to kill each other. It was Doc Holliday, slaughtering a line of empty whiskey bottles. He was in his shirtsleeves, still wearing the same blue vest he had had on the previous evening. Apparently, Wyatt and Bat weren't the only people who hadn't been to bed last night.

For a man who'd likely gone without sleep, his aim was damn good. He was fast, too, thumbing the hammer back and pulling the trigger in almost the same motion. In mere seconds, every whiskey bottle had been reduced to a pile of broken glass.

When the last bottle was dead, Doc holstered his gun and turned around, grinning. "Hello, Wyatt. I trust your bit of heroics last night was successful?" Now that Wyatt had gotten a better look at him, it was even more obvious that he hadn't slept last night. His hair fell into his face and around the crumpled collar of his shirt in a disheveled tangle. The bright morning sunlight brought out gold glints in it, and lightened his eyes from smoky grey to a pale, clear blue. It also revealed the bloodless pallor of his skin and the bruised-looking smudges under those blue eyes in a way that the softer light of the Long Branch's lamps never did.

"Depends on how you define success," Wyatt said. He reholstered his gun—there was clearly no need for it here—and walked over to stand next to Doc. "Lot of broken glass there, Doc. Guess that reputation of yours isn't just talk."

"Nonsense. I assure you, anything bad you may have heard about me was purely fictional." Doc was still grinning with an almost obscene cheerfulness. It should have been irritating. Somehow, it wasn't. "The good parts, on the other hand…" He coughed, one arm wrapped around his ribs and a handkerchief held to his mouth. The coughing fit lasted only a few moments, and then he brushed his hair out of his face and folded both arms across his chest. There was a red mark high on his neck that was just fading into a bruise, which, put together with the messy hair, probably explained the good mood. "Kate came back last night," he added conversationally.

"Yeah," Wyatt said. "I can see that."

Doc raised a hand to his neck, then looked down. If it had been anyone else, Wyatt would have sworn he was blushing, but this was Doc, and Wyatt wasn't sure he even knew the meaning of the word shame. "So, is Masterson satisfied now that all of the bad, bad men have been brought to justice?"

"Yes." Wyatt spoke abruptly, hoping that Doc would take the hint and drop the subject. He looked away, watching the sun glint off the broken shards of Doc's whiskey bottles. It was actually sort of pretty. Beyond them, in the next lot, a new building was going up, its frame standing skeletal and bare against the blue of the sky.

"Ah," Doc said. "I had heard one of them was dead. I'd assumed Masterson shot him."

The building next-door looked like it was going to be two stories. The beams that would support the second floor were already in place, the wood raw and new. Once it was finished, the walls would weather to grey, unless the owners decided to paint it.

"Does it ever get any easier?" Wyatt asked.

"Does what get easier?"

"Killing a man."

Doc stretched a hand out as if to touch Wyatt, then pulled it back. He extracted a silver flask from his vest pocket and held it out to Wyatt instead. "Killing _is_ easy, Wyatt. You just point your gun at a man and pull the trigger. The hard part is doing it before he can shoot you."

Wyatt accepted the flask and took a sip. It was whiskey, and not cheap whiskey, either. He screwed the cap back on and handed it back to Doc.

Doc removed the cap again and drank deeply, coughing once as he lowered the flask. He studied it for a moment before capping it and putting it away. "Or if you're drunk. That makes it harder to aim."

"This isn't something to joke about, Doc," Wyatt said, frowning. Shooting a man wasn't something one ought to make light of.

"I beg to differ. One should try never to take death seriously." Doc looked up at Wyatt, head canted slightly to one side. "You look terrible," he added after a moment. "Go home and sleep. You'll feel better about it tomorrow."

Wyatt was pretty sure that he wouldn't, but sleep was starting to sound like a good idea. His neck and shoulders were beginning to ache with exhaustion. He rolled his shoulders back, feeling one of them pop. "Yeah, maybe you're right. You ought to think about getting some sleep, too."

Doc's eyes narrowed in irritation. "I don't—" He broke off mid-sentence, interrupted by another coughing fit. Doc pulled his handkerchief back out of his pocket and held it to his mouth, doubling over with the force of the spasms. The coughs were harsh and rattling, coming from deep inside his chest.

Wyatt took Doc by the elbow and pulled him upright again. Doc sagged against him, still coughing, and for a moment, Wyatt found himself supporting most of the other man's weight, and was surprised by the intensity of the concern he felt.

Doc's coughing trailed to a halt, and he leaned against Wyatt, breathing in hoarse gasps.

"You all right, there, Doc?" Wyatt heard himself asking. It was a stupid question. Of course Doc wasn't all right. People who were all right didn't breath like that.

"Fine," Doc said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He pulled away from Wyatt and straightened his shoulders, wincing. He glanced down at the crumpled handkerchief in his hand and his face went blank for a moment before he looked back up at Wyatt. "Perhaps I _will_ go to bed." He crushed the handkerchief into a ball and shoved it into his pocket, turning toward the hotel.

Wyatt followed him to the building's porch, slowing his steps to match Doc's. "You thought about seeing a doctor?" he asked.

"I have seen several doctors," Doc told him. "They all said the same thing."

"That being?"

"'Go West, young man,'" Doc quoted. "Apparently the air out here is more conducive to health." He produced his flask again and took a small sip, then shrugged. "I suppose we'll see."

"Go to bed, Doc. I'll see you tomorrow."

Doc touched two fingers to an imaginary hat. "Good night, sweet prince," he said, giving Wyatt a mocking little bow, "and flights of angels see you to your rest." He climbed the hotel steps and went back inside, to where Kate was presumably waiting for him.

Wyatt went home and went to bed. Maybe it would look better in the morning.

**

* * *

Excessive Historical Notes:** "Cowboys" was actually an insult, implying that one did unsavoury things with cows—the polite term was "cowhand." Also, the toll for Dodge City's toll bridge really was 25 cents a person. 

George Hoy was a real person; a cowhand from Texas who was the only person Wyatt killed in the line of duty while in Dodge. If, that is, it was actually Wyatt's bullet that struck him—it could have been Jim Masterson, since both of them were shooting at him at the time. The circumstances of his death were similar to the ones depicted here: he and several friends fired shots into a saloon (actually the Lady Gay, not the Long Branch, but we wanted it to be a saloon North of the deadline), and Wyatt and Bat's brother Jim Masterson (not the one who was murdered—that was Ed Masterson) pursued them. The chase scene isn't quite as exciting in the history books. Also, Jim isn't in this story, because we decided to have Morgan and Virgil there instead.

Texans. At this point, it probably seems like we're intentionally demonizing them. I swear we're not trying to. It's just that every time we look up the history of a particular shooting, there's some guy from Texas involved. Apparently, Texans and Kansans were less than fond of one another.


	4. The First Stone, part I

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual historical figures and events, and partially based on our own hours of twisted fantasies produced by seeing _Tombstone_ one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.

**Posted By:** **Elspeth** and **Pixyofthestyx**  
**Ships:** Doc/Kate, Bat/Mollie (past tense), Doc/Wyatt vibes (yea!), fledgling Morgan/Louisa. The list goes on and on.  
**Warnings:** This instalment of Gunslinger contains profanity, drinking, violence, historical inaccuracy, lots of Bible quotes, and extensive mocking of Methodists (we blame Henry Fielding). It does not contain hot sex. Sorry.

**Gunslinger: Dodge City**

_Part Four: The First Stone, part I._

"She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction!" the preacher holding court across the street from the Long Branch railed. "She trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God!"

Morgan did his best to ignore the man, and kept walking. He wasn't the only one; North Front Street was busy with mid-day traffic. The earliest of the cattle drives were starting to trickle through Dodge, and the streets were just beginning to fill with longhorns, wagons, and men on horseback. Come May, the town would be over-run by cows and manure. And cowhands, of course, most of whom would probably try to shoot Wyatt. It seemed to be becoming a popular pastime.

"The just Lord is in the midst thereof; he will not do iniquity! Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light! He faileth not; but the unjust know no shame!" The sound of the preacher's ranting followed Morgan into the jail, cutting off only when he closed the door behind him. It was replaced by the sound of the Conklins' ranting.

"We citizens of Dodge are deeply concerned," Dolores Conklin was saying, one hand pressed to her ample bosom.

"Deeply concerned," Edgar Conklin chimed in.

"-by the constant shootings and pervasive spread of lawlessness in our town," Mrs. Conklin continued, as if her husband had not spoken at all. She didn't seem to notice Morgan standing by the door either.

"Well, ma'am, I wouldn't really describe two shootings in two months as 'constant shootings,'" Bat said. He was standing with his hands on the back of his chair, chair and desk forming a protective barrier between himself and Mrs. Conklin. Bat claimed that he wasn't intimidated by her, but Morgan was pretty sure that that was a lie.

"I'm sure _you_ wouldn't," she said, drawing herself up straighter. Somehow, she managed to look down her nose at Bat despite being slightly shorter than he was. "Four people are dead, Mister Masterson. Four people whose deaths you failed to prevent. Whose deaths you may have actually _caused_."

Bat was gripping the back of the chair so tightly his knuckles had gone white. He drew breath to speak, but Mrs. Conklin overrode him. "When your brother, God rest his soul, was sheriff, we never had this sort of-"

"Bat!" Morgan said brightly. "Mr. Conklin, Ma'am, good morning." He tried to sound cheerful, as if he were actually pleased to see the two of them in the jail. "Is there anything we can help you with?"

"I rather doubt it." Mrs. Conklin turned back to Bat. "You and that overgrown thug from Wichita are paid to keep the peace, not to shoot people in the street."

Morgan found himself wishing that Wyatt were there to hear himself described as an "overgrown thug." And to deal with the Conklins, so that he wouldn't have to. He spoke up again, cutting off whatever Bat had been intending to say. "They didn't have much of a choice about that, ma'am."

"One always has a choice, young man," she said. Mrs. Conklin's pale, close-set eyes bored into Morgan, as if he were a wayward child and she a disapproving aunt. "And one generally has the option of not shooting people."

"Well, Morgan," Bat pushed the chair in under the desk and came forward to clap Morgan on the shoulder, "it looks like you've got things under control now. I'll just go find Wyatt and see if he needs any help with anything." And then Bat, like the ungrateful, freeloading traitor that he was, collected his hat and cane and scuttled out the door, abandoning Morgan to his fate.

"I feel—and Mr. Conklin agrees with me, don't you, Edgar?—that much of this city's unwholesome atmosphere can be blamed on its saloons and dancehalls." Mrs. Conklin took a step forward, twitching her skirts to one side to avoid brushing against Bat's desk. She stabbed one gloved finger at Morgan's chest. "Do you have any idea how many drinking and gambling establishments there are in this town?"

Morgan, in fact, had a very good idea, since all of them were required to get a permit from the mayor's office—well, all of the ones Mayor Kelly didn't actually own. "Well, north of the deadline, you've got-" he started.

"And every single one of these deplorable incidents has been connected to one of them!" she said triumphantly. "The violence in this town is out of control. Mr. Conklin and I are frankly terrified to leave our home after dark. Drunken trailhands with guns, lawmen who solve every disturbance by shooting and clubbing people, gamblers practicing every kind of debauchery… As a resident of this town I demand that you do something!"

"What exactly would you like me to, ma'am?" Morgan asked. He fought the impulse to take a step back, away from that accusing finger. He was not going to cower behind the desk like Bat. Wyatt and Virgil wouldn't cower.

"Close down the saloons, of course," Mrs. Conklin said promptly.

"Or at least impose some sort of curfew," Mr. Conklin added. "All drinking establishments closed down after midnight, perhaps."

"We can't do that, sir," Morgan said. "There's no law against running a saloon, and this," he gestured at his badge, "only gives me the right to enforce the laws, not make them."

"The young man has a point, there, Mrs. Conklin," Mr. Conklin said. He smoothed the somber black lapels of his coat, then extended an arm to his wife. "Perhaps we should take this up with Mayor Kelly."

Mrs. Conklin was not to be so easily dissuaded. "There must be _something_ you can do," she insisted. "Or are you as powerless to uphold common morality and hold your fellow peacekeepers accountable as you are to make people control their dogs?"

"I told you, ma'am," Morgan said, humiliatingly aware of how defensive he sounded, "there's also no law against keeping dogs. I can't just arrest people for bothering you; they actually have to do something illegal."

"Well, if gunning people down in the street is not illegal-"

"There a Wyatt Earp here?"

All three of them turned to face the doorway, where a big, broad-shouldered man in a tan duster stood silhouetted.

"Excuse me, ma'am, sir." Morgan turned away from the Conklins, suppressing the desire to sigh with relief, and faced the newcomer. "I'm sorry, sir, he's not here right now."

The man frowned, clearly annoyed. "Well, if he ain't here, where can I find him?"

Morgan shrugged. "I don't know." If it were evening, Wyatt would probably have been in the Long Branch. If it were the middle of the night, he'd have been back in the boarding house, asleep. However, at midday, he might be anywhere. It was a nice day, all warm April sunlight without the pounding heat that would come later in the summer, so it could be that Wyatt wasn't even in town at all, but out riding somewhere. "You'll have to come back later. Or you could ask Marshal Masterson, if you need to find him now. He might know. Bowler hat, cane, a little shorter than me," Morgan waved a hand in the air to demonstrate Bat's height. "You can't miss him."

"We'll leave you to go about your business, deputy," Mr. Conklin said, offering an arm to his wife once again.

Mrs. Conklin laid a hand on her husband's elbow and said, "Perhaps you'll be able to help this," she paused for a moment, eying the man in the duster with palpable disapproval, "_gentleman _with his problem." She swept out of the room, somehow managing to avoid brushing against the stranger, in spite of the width of her skirts and the narrowness of the doorway.

"So, this Masterson will know where he is?" the stranger asked. He was still leaning in the doorway—he hadn't bothered to step aside to let the Conklins pass—and his duster fell open just enough for Morgan to see a large Bowie knife hanging from his belt.

"Maybe," Morgan said. "Or I could give him a message for you, next time I see him. What was it you wanted?"

"I didn't say." The man smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile. "Let's just say I want to have a little talk with him."

"About what?" Morgan asked. He got the impression that this 'little talk' wouldn't be all that healthful for Wyatt. Or for the stranger, for that matter.

"He'll know when I find him." The man left, the door swinging shut behind him, leaving Morgan alone.

Morgan stared after him for a moment, then shrugged and sat down behind the desk, pulling out the first in a stack of written complaints—well, the second; the first was from the Conklins. Charlie Pike at the Lady Gay wanted to make sure that the Dodge City Peacekeeping Commission knew that the owner of the saloon across the street had never purchased a liquor license.

Whatever the man had wanted, Wyatt could take care of himself.

* * *

Damn Dolores Conklin anyway. What did she know about it? 

Bat stalked down the street, ignoring the ache in his hip. He wasn't going to limp where that harridan might see; she'd only take it as further evidence that he wasn't fit to be a lawman. And then find some way to blame Mollie's death on him, too.

'Really, Mister Masterson, when a man pulls a gun on you in a saloon and fires straight through the woman on your lap in order to kill you, it's clearly your fault for being in a saloon in the first place!' And then she'd sniff, and stare at him down her nose, and add, 'Mr. Conklin thinks so, too, don't you, Edgar?'

The worst thing about her was that she was so utterly convinced she was right that, after a while, a man found himself agreeing with her, whether he wanted to or not.

Bat had told Morgan that he was going out to look for Wyatt, but since Wyatt was probably either in the Long Branch or out riding by the river, he didn't plan on looking very hard. He would check the Long Branch, and if Wyatt wasn't there, well, at least it was a place he was pretty sure that the Conklins wouldn't enter.

Front Street was usually pretty quiet around noon, but today there was a small cluster of people gathered across the street from the Long Branch, listening to a big man in a somber black coat that reminded Bat of an undertaker's. "Neither thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God," he was saying. "The Lord makes his word clear on this, and therefore it is our responsibility to search our conscience for any sign of vice and repent. God is ever ready with forgiveness, but not for those who continue to wallow in sin."

The Conklins, Bat thought, ought to be introduced to the man.

Wyatt wasn't in the Long Branch, but Holliday was. The gambler was huddled over a whisky bottle at the table nearest the door, back against the wall so that he could watch the room in the mirror behind the bar. Bat bought himself a drink at the bar and joined him, sitting beside him so that he could watch the mirror as well. From there, he could see pretty much the entire room—and keep an eye on the door.

Holliday looked bad, even for Holliday. His eyes looked bruised, and his face, covered in a sheen of sweat, was even more colorless than usual. "What do you want, Masterson?" he asked, voice even quieter and more hoarse than it usually was. He turned aside to cough, muffling it behind a handkerchief.

There was something deeply wrong with Holliday, and considering that he still had the same cough he'd ridden in with, Bat was pretty sure he knew what that something was. This morning, he had the tired, drawn look of a man in pain—the sort of dull, constant pain Bat remembered from the days after he'd been shot down in Texas. It made Holliday slightly less annoying. "Nothing," Bat said. "I was just looking for Wyatt."

"Yes, aren't we all." Holliday said. He coughed again, and downed a shot of whisky, then poured himself another one, letting it sit on the table with one hand wrapped loosely around the glass, not drinking. For once, he wasn't playing with that damn deck of cards. "He's out playing hooky. He came by earlier to ascertain that everything in here was harmonious, then went out for a ride. I declined to accompany him." His accent was heavier than usual, and he stumbled slightly over the long words.

Wyatt was out riding. While Bat had been trapped inside the jail with Dolores Conklin blaming him for everything from Ed's death to original sin, Wyatt had been out enjoying the spring air.

"Starting a little early, aren't you, Holliday?" Bat asked, indicating the other man's full glass and the level of whisky in the bottle.

"Bad night."

"Where's…" Bat paused for a second, searching for the name. Holliday's woman, the one with the breasts, what was she called? "Ah, Kate. Where's Kate?"

"Asleep."

Fine. If Holliday didn't want to talk to him, he didn't need to talk to Holliday. So much for being polite.

The shooting two weeks ago had been in no way Bat's fault. It hadn't really been Wyatt's fault either. All of the blame lay squarely with Hoy and his friends, for being stupid enough to start firing at them. And yet the Conklins weren't the only people complaining, just the loudest. And the most persistent.

What did people expect them to do, stand there and get shot?

Bat stared at his full shot glass. It didn't offer any enlightenment.

"Sometimes I hate this job."

Holliday said nothing. He, too, was staring at his whisky glass.

"You do the best you can, and people are still full of advice about how you could have done things better. Even Wyatt; he's been avoiding everybody ever since that kid died." Bat sighed.

"He doesn't avoid me."

Bat ignored Holliday's comment. "He's feels guilty about it, which is pointless, since you can't change what's happened."

"Wyatt doesn't like killing people," Holliday said. He smiled, then slumped further over the table, arms resting on the scarred wood, and leaned his chin on his forearm, eyes still fixed on his glass. "He's all shiny and good like that."

Bat looked at Holliday for a long moment, unsure whether he was serious or not. "Yeah," he said finally. "Shiny." He rolled the edge of his glass around in a slow circle, watching the way the liquid inside moved. "Here's hoping it doesn't get him shot." He lifted his glass, then set the it back down without drinking. Bat had discovered that he didn't really want his whisky. It was cool outdoors, but the air inside the Long Branch was warm and still. Actually, beer or lemonade would have been better. Or water. "A man can tell when you're not willing to shoot back," he said. That had been Ed's downfall, really. He hadn't had it in him to shoot a man, and when he had been corned by those cowhands, he'd tried to talk them down. And then the bastards had shot him.

"Not wanting to's not the same as not bein' able to." Holliday straightened slightly and coughed again, a short, broken-off sound, then slumped forward again. "Are you plannin' on drinking that, or are you just going to sit here and sulk?"

"I think I'm just going to sit here and sulk," Bat told him. One of the men at the next table over got up to get another drink, and Bat watched him in the mirror until he sat down again. Next to him, Holliday was doing the same thing.

Neither of them said anything for a minute, Bat thinking about Ed, and his own failure to back him up—he'd started running when he heard the first shot, but by the time he had gotten there, it had been too late—and Holliday thinking about whatever it was Holliday thought about. When the door opened, both of them looked up simultaneously.

Three-Fingers Jack Danver skulked inside, wearing a distinctly hunted look underneath his bushy, greying beard. The preacher from across the street was right on his heels.

"Do not fall into the trap of liquor, brother," he was saying, one powerful hand stretching towards Three-Fingers Jack's shoulder.

Three-Fingers ducked out of reach. "I ain't yer brother, and you can keep yer paws off me." He backed away until he reached the bar, then turned to the bartender. "I'll have a beer." He paid for the drink, turned to find a table, and caught sight of Bat.

"Good afternoon, Marshal," he said. He set his beer back down and unbuckled his gunbelt, setting it down atop the bar, then nodded at Bat.

The preacher was watching from the doorway, a look of disappointed disgust on his face. He shook his head sadly. "Demon drink has him in its clutches."

Suddenly, Bat's whisky looked much more appealing. He picked the glass up and drained it. When he set it down again, Holliday smirked and nudged the whisky bottle over to him.

"Satanic whisky, marshal?"

All right, the man was amusing once in a while, he'd give Wyatt that much. Bat picked up the bottle and poured himself another shot. The preacher continued to speak.

"Wine is a mocker," he quoted. "Strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise."

Holliday sat up straighter and saluted the man with his shot glass. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die," he said. He tossed back his whisky and slumped against the back of the chair, smirking.

It was a tactical mistake. The preacher turned toward him like a hound catching a scent—or an obnoxious busybody finding a new victim. "Be not deceived," he said. "Evil communications corrupt." He strode toward the table, looming over Holliday and Bat. "Awake to righteousness, and sin not, for you have not the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame."

If Holliday had had the sense to keep quiet, the man would probably have given up and left them alone, but being Holliday, he just had to keep on talking. "Look, Masterson," he said brightly, "he can quote the Bible."

"Do not mock the word of God, son," the preacher said gently. He leaned forward, grey-green eyes intent on Holliday's face. "You have turned down a dark path, but you must realize that you are only hurting yourself."

Holliday's eyes narrowed with palpable loathing. "I could change that, if you don't-" He broke off, wrapping an arm around his ribs as a violent bout of coughing doubled him over. He leaned against the table, head down, gasping for air, while Bat and the preacher stared at one another, unsure of what to do.

God, Holliday sounded like he was going to die. Bat hesitated, wondering if he should pound the other man on the back or something. Before he could attempt it, Holliday's coughing fit quieted.

Holliday stayed motionless for a moment, eyes closed, wheezing. He reached with unnerving accuracy for the whisky bottle, then opened his eyes and pulled it towards him, pouring himself a shot with shaking hands. Whisky sloshed over the side of the glass and spilled onto the table. "Tell me, father," he said, voice hoarse, "if I abstain from sin and am real good, do you think God will heal me?" He pulled a handkerchief out of his vest pocket and coughed once more, spitting something dark into it, then picked up the shot glass and drained it.

The preacher blinked, clearly searching for something to say. Bat didn't volunteer anything.

"God can heal your soul," the preacher said after a moment, "and that means more than physical health."

Holliday glared, and looked for a moment as if he were seriously considering reaching for the gun under his coat that he and Bat were both pretending wasn't there. Bat groaned inwardly. If Holliday actually drew on the man, Bat would have to arrest him, and that would be bloody and painful for everyone involved. 'Sorry, Wyatt,' he could hear himself explaining, 'I truly regret knocking him unconscious, but I couldn't let him gun a preacher down right in front of me, no matter how much he deserved it.' Actually, maybe it wouldn't be that painful.

Fortunately, Holliday chose to counter-attack with words. "My soul," he said softly, "isn't going to hemorrhage and drown in its own _blood._"

"Despair is the greatest sin of all, son." The preacher laid one hand on Holliday's shoulder, in a gesture that was probably intended to be comforting.

Holliday said nothing; he simply looked at the hand, then looked up at the preacher.

The preacher quickly removed his hand.

"If I were you," Bat suggested, "I would leave."

The preacher glanced around the bar and seemed to notice for the first time that both the bartender and Chalk Beeson, the proprietor, who'd been sitting behind the bar doing accounts, were glaring daggers at him. Chalk did not like temperance workers; they were bad for business.

The preacher sighed, shoulders slumping for a moment, and then he straightened up, addressing the room at large. "I will be preaching in the Methodist church this Sunday, for those of you who wish to come and hear."

"I'm Presbyterian," Holliday announced. The preacher, who had learned his lesson, ignored him.

"My mother always said that Methodists were untrustworthy," Bat said. Quietly, so that preacher, now on his way out the door, wouldn't hear.

"And subject to strange enthusiasms," Holliday added. "Mine said the same thing. And my father always said that only white trash and slaves were Methodists."

"Sounds like a charming fellow."

Holliday, who was slumped over the table again, glared at him half-heartedly. "Just for the record, if I wasn't tired, I'd shoot you."

"Right," Bat said. He looked down at his drink again, spinning it in a slow circle and watching the whisky inside swirl. He probably ought to go back to the jail. It probably wasn't the best of ideas to leave Morgan in there all by himself; he was still inexperienced. Actually, Morgan was probably a year or so older than he was, but compared to Bat, he was a green kid.

It had been a good half hour since Bat had left. The Conklins were probably gone now.

Holliday sighed. "When is Wyatt comin' back?"

"Damned if I know," Bat said. "Damn Wyatt anyway, out riding and enjoying himself while I was stuck in the jail with that woman." And then, reflected in the mirror, he saw Wyatt walking through the door. "Oh, hello, Wyatt," he added.

"Last time I looked," Wyatt said dryly, "this wasn't exactly the jail."

"Wyatt." Holliday straightened up a touch, smiling. "You're back."

"Doc." Wyatt clapped a hand on Holliday's shoulder, then pulled out a chair and sat down next to him. He picked up Holliday's empty glass and poured himself a shot from the Holliday's whisky bottle. Amazingly, Holliday didn't object.

"My apologies for this morning, Wyatt," he said instead. "I was unconscionably rude."

Wyatt shook his head, grinning. "Don't worry about it. I didn't really expect you'd want me to drag you out for a ride." He turned away from Holliday to address Bat. "Didn't expect to see you two sharing a drink."

"I was in the jail," Bat explained, "but Mrs. Conklin chased me out."

"Dreadful woman," Holliday said. He turned to Wyatt, adding, "I tried to purchase some handkerchiefs at her store yesterday, and she glared at me as if I were planning to use them for something nefarious. What sort of nefariousness," he stumbled slightly over the word—if it was a word; Bat wasn't sure—"could you carry out with a handkerchief? Unless you used it to gag someone, or-"

"Doc," Wyatt interjected firmly.

Holliday shut up.

Wyatt gave him a searching look, and frowned, eyebrows drawing together. "Damn, you look like hell." He leaned over and laid the palm of one hand against Holliday's forehead, successfully evading Holliday's attempt to swat it away. "And you're burning up. Why the hell aren't you in bed?"

"Kate kicked me out so she could get some sleep." Seeing the look of irritation on Wyatt's face, he added, somewhat defensively, "She deserved it. She didn't get any sleep last night."

"All right." Wyatt held up a hand. "We've established that I don't need to know any details."

"Trust me," Holliday said, "last night was not fun for anyone involved."

Bat pushed his shot glass away and stood up. His hip had stiffened up while he sat, and standing made it ache dully. "I should get back to the jail. I left Morgan to deal with the Conklins by himself."

"Virgil told me that you hide behind the desk when they come in," Wyatt said. He grinned. "I always thought he was joking."

"I don't hide behind my desk," Bat protested. "I make a strategic retreat until Virgil makes her go away."

"She's got a point, you know, Bat," Wyatt said. "We could probably have handled that shoot out differently."

And there Wyatt went again. "Don't start," Bat told him. "I've already heard it all from Dolores Conklin. She threw in all of the ways I could have handled two months ago differently, too, just for variety."

"Yeah, well, I didn't say she had a point about everything."

"Christ, Wyatt, if it bothers you that much, I'll shoot them for you next time," Holliday drawled. He reclaimed his whisky glass from Wyatt and took a sip. When he set it down again, Wyatt took it back.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Bat said. "Unless somebody actually gets shot, and then I'm going to remember it nice and clear." He collected his cane from where it leaned against the table. "Wyatt. Holliday."

"I'll follow you in a minute or so," Wyatt said. "Hey, Doc, if you're still here when I get off shift this evening, I'll walk you home."

"If he can still walk at that point," Bat couldn't resist saying.

Holliday glared at him—if he'd been ten years younger, he probably would have stuck his tongue out—and then started coughing again. Wyatt passed him the shot glass, which Holliday took, drained, and handed back.

"Oh, for God's sake, Wyatt, get your own glass," Bat told him. As he walked out of the saloon, he could hear the two of them talking behind him.

"That's it, Doc, you're going back to bed."

"I beg to differ. I will go home when I feel like it."

"Come on, you're never going to get any better just sitting here…"

Either Wyatt didn't know what Holliday was sick with, or his powers of denial were truly amazing.

Bat stepped through the door and nearly ran into a large man standing on the steps. "Sorry about that," he began, taking a step back.

"You Masterson?" the man interrupted. He straightened his tan duster, but not before Bat caught a brief glimpse of something that looked an awful lot like a gunbelt.

Bat took in the man's hulking silhouette and the sullen expression on his clean-shaven face, and debated the merits of saying 'no.' "Yes, I'm Masterson. You got business with me?"

"The kid at the jail said you'd know where Wyatt Earp was."

"You got business with him?"

"That's between him and me," the man said. He took a step closer, looming over Bat in an obvious attempt to be intimidating. It might have been more successful if Bat didn't work with three men who were all six feet or taller. "You just tell me where I can find him."

"You could try the Lady Gay," Bat offered. He carefully did not look at the door behind him. "He said something about heading over there earlier. It's on South Front Street," he added. "On the other side of town."

The man left without saying another word. He didn't thank Bat for the information, either.

Bat watched him go, then headed for the jail, giving the preacher—still there across the street—a wide berth.

* * *

Walking Doc home, Wyatt reflected, was probably the most excitement he was going to see today. Which was probably a good thing. As boring as spending an afternoon with Morgan checking people's liquor licenses was, it beat shooting people, and if any trouble had occurred to break the monotony, it would only have given the Conklins another reason to bother Bat. For some reason Wyatt had never been able to pin down, Dolores Conklin absolutely hated Bat. Maybe it was the bowler hat. 

More likely, it was his habit of tipping said bowler hat at every attractive woman he walked past. You'd think getting shot over a woman would have taught him better.

As often as Doc was sick, you'd think he would learn better than to hang around in saloons and sulk when he ought to be in bed. But no, he was Doc, and therefore constitutionally incapable of listening to reason, and had apparently felt compelled to wait around in the saloon in order to apologize for a rude comment Wyatt hadn't even really registered—strange, when Doc generally didn't care whom he insulted. His willingness to say anything to anybody was one of the things Wyatt liked about him.

By the time they had gotten halfway to the Great Western Hotel, Doc had been leaning heavily on Wyatt, stumbling over his own feet like a man half-asleep. Wyatt had a feeling that it had had less to do with however much alcohol Doc had consumed, and more to do with the fever he could feel radiating off the other man's skin.

Kate had taken one look at him, sworn, and hauled him inside the hotel room, ranting like a harpy all the while. "Where were you all day? Do you think you can just wander off and ignore me?" Somehow, amidst the flurry of complaints—surprisingly selfish complaints, Wyatt had thought, given the circumstances—Doc had ended up stripped of coat and boots and shoved into bed, two glasses filled with water and whisky waiting ready on the nightstand. He was asleep the instant he lay down. Then Kate had thrown Wyatt out of the room, giving him the distinct impression that she felt the whole thing was somehow his fault.

Which it damn well wasn't. He wasn't responsible for every stupid thing that Doc did, no matter what everybody else seemed to think.

If he didn't shake whatever this was off in a few days, Wyatt was going to insist that he see a doctor.

"Anything wrong, Wyatt?" Morgan asked.

Wyatt shook his head, then added, "Not really. Is that the last of these things?" He held up the last sheet of paper from Bat's desk, a notice informing the city's peacekeeping force that part of one of the town's boardwalks was damaged, and it was the city's duty—i.e., the peacekeeping commission's duty—to repair it.

"Yeah," Morgan said. He stood up, stretching. "I guess that means one of us can go home."

His movement toward the door was forestalled by Chalk Beeson entering through it. The normally good-natured Beeson was livid with indignation, the ends of his carefully curled and waxed mustache bristling.

"Marshal," he announced forcefully, "I want that man out of my saloon!"

"What, Doc?" Wyatt asked.

"Holliday?" Beeson looked momentarily confused. "No, he's fine. He brings in customers. Folks come to play cards with him and then buy drinks to drown their sorrows when they lose. It's that damned bible-thumper! He's driving my customers away. And he insulted Miss Hand." Beeson stepped to one side and gestured dramatically at the doorway, where Dora Hand and another woman stood, looking vaguely uncertain. "And Miss Louisa!"

Wyatt stood automatically, instantly feeling oversized and clumsy compared to the two petite women in the doorway.

"Really, Chalk," Miss Hand said, coming into the room to lay a placating hand on the saloon-owner's arm, "you needn't make such a fuss about all this. It isn't as if I haven't heard that sort of thing before." She smiled at Beeson, and raised a hand to pat at her strawberry blonde hair. "It's a hazard of the profession." She turned her smile on Wyatt

"There was still no call for it." Beeson beckoned to Miss Louisa. "Miss Louisa, tell the marshal what that man called you."

Louisa, a tiny blonde who was hardly more than a girl, stepped into the room. She adjusted her shawl, which dripped with pale blue fringe the same color as her dress, and said, "Well, let me see, he called us 'painted Jezebels,' and fallen women, and Lord knows what. Right in the saloon, in front of Mr. Beeson and Miss Hand's guest and everyone." She delicately did not identify who Miss Hand's "guest" had been.

"I believe the word 'harlot' figured in his remarks as well," Miss Hand said.

"Was this the same preacher who was out in front of your place this morning?" Morgan asked. He stepped away from the side of the desk to look down at Louisa with an expression that bordered on awe.

"Yes," Beeson said, in tones of greatest indignation. "He won't go away. Marshal Masterson threw him out once already, but he just keeps coming back. Like a bad penny."

"He's been out there preaching all day?" Morgan sounded deeply impressed. He was still staring at Louisa. "And he hasn't gone hoarse yet?"

"His voice was certainly in fine condition a few minutes ago," Miss Hand said. "I've been called much worse, and by louder men, but Louisa shouldn't have to hear that sort of thing, and Chalk certainly shouldn't have to put up with it in his establishment."

"I'll be damned if I will," Beeson said. "Sorry, ladies. I want one of you to come and escort him right out of the Long Branch. I'd throw him out myself but, well," he shrugged, "he's a preacher. I can't see myself brawling with a preacher."

Louisa was now staring up at Morgan through her eyelashes. They were very long, and much darker than her hair.

Wyatt sighed. "I'll go deal with it."

"You must get to do so many interesting things as a lawman," he heard Louisa say as he followed Beeson out of the jail.

"Well, some days are more interesting than others..."

The Long Branch was significantly less crowded than usual for this time of the evening. It could have been due to the usual patrons' desire to spend the lovely spring evening outdoors, but most likely it was because of the large man in a dark, somber suit who stood in front of the bar lecturing on the many benefits of temperance.

"The pervasive effects of alcohol have been the downfall of many an otherwise good man. Even now, many a wife waits at home with her children, wondering if her husband is going to come home safely, hoping he has not spent all of the family's money on drink-"

"Excuse me, sir?" Wyatt interrupted.

The man broke off and turned to face him, looking irritated. "Yes, brother?" He was almost as tall as Wyatt, big enough to look him straight in the eye, and built like an ox, yet somehow, the staid black suit he wore didn't look out of place. There was a sprinkle of grey in his red-brown hair, and his eyes were a peculiar pale green color.

"Mister Beeson has made a complaint against you," Wyatt said. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave the saloon, Mister…" he paused, waiting for the man to supply a name.

"Reverend Jonah Dobson," the man said. He frowned. "There is such a thing as freedom of religion in this fine country, deputy."

"Marshal, actually. Marshal Earp."

"Marshal," Dobson corrected himself. "It is both my right and my duty to spread God's word."

"Yes, well, not in Mr. Beeson's saloon," Wyatt told him. "It's his right to decide who he wants in here, and he says you're costing him business. If you don't agree to leave, I might have to take you in for causing a disturbance, and neither of us wants that."

Dobson sighed. "I can see that my arguments shall do little good here." He donned his hat and turned for the door. "At least you have enough respect not to insult me."

Wyatt smiled in spite of himself. He'd heard Doc's somewhat rambling account of Dobson's previous attempt to proselytize in the Long Branch—"Damn religion anyway. First my cousin writes to say she wants to be a nun, then this sonuvabitch comes and pesters me while I'm trying to drink." He had dropped his voice to a ridiculously low and solemn pitch, adding, "You have set your feet on the pathway of Satan, young man! You are doomed! Doomed!"—and had no doubt that whatever he'd said to Dobson in reply had been less than polite. Actually, it had probably been downright rude. "At least you're not trying to take a swing at me for kicking you out of the saloon," he returned.

"Violence," Dobson said primly, sounding eerily like Dolores Conklin for a moment, "is never the answer. However, I have nearly lost all hope of trying to convince most of the people of this fair city of that fact. Is it all right if I continue to try and convince them outside?" he added snidely.

"Go ahead," Wyatt said. "As long as you don't bother Mr. Beeson's patrons or go around insulting ladies."

"I have seen no ladies thus far," Dobson said.

Wyatt thought of Dora Hand, singing hymns in the Episcopal church on Sunday with as much faith as any of the "respectable" ladies of Dodge, and resisted the urge to push Dobson bodily out of the Long Branch's door. He settled for following close on his heels, crowding him out into the street.

The two of them nearly ran into a man in a tan duster who was climbing up the saloon's steps.

"Sorry, preacher," the man said.

"Are you sure you really wish to go in there?" Dobson asked.

"I do if Masterson's still in there." The man ran a hand over his clean-shaven chin, and spit a mouthful of tobacco juice onto the ground at the foot of the steps. It missed Wyatt's boot by about an inch. "I asked after Wyatt Earp and the little bastard sent me on a wild goose chase."

"Well, you're in luck, then," Dobson informed him. "Marshal Earp is right here." He waved a hand at Wyatt. "Maybe he'll be more receptive to your arguments, whatever they may be, than he was to mine." And with that, he turned and strode away, the narrow tails of his black coat flapping.

The man in the tan duster smiled at Wyatt. It wasn't a nice smile. "So," he said. "You're the man who killed my friend Hoy."

George Hoy. He'd known that shooting the poor kid had been a bad decision from the moment he'd pulled the trigger. "Yes," Wyatt said, "I guess I'm the man you're looking for."

"Well, Mister Earp, I'm Clay Allison. Hoy was a friend of mine, and I don't take kindly to people shooting my friends."

Clay Allison. The name sounded familiar. And then Wyatt remembered Bat talking about "a crazy, hot-blooded bastard called Allison," who had reportedly killed two marshals down in New Mexico a few years back, and pulled a gun on a dentist who had pulled out the wrong tooth—not Doc, who wouldn't have made that sort of mistake to start with, and definitely wouldn't have let a patient draw on him and walk away.

This was not good. Someday, Wyatt decided, he was going to die in front of the Long Branch, considering how many people kept confronting him here. It might even be today. Under his duster, Allison was wearing a gunbelt with a pair of heavy pistols hanging from it, in direct defiance of Dodge's no-guns-North-of-the-deadline law.

"I don't take kindly to people shooting at me," Wyatt said. He pulled the side of his coat back to expose his Colt.

And then Bat came strolling up the street. "Hey, Wyatt, Morgan said that-" He stopped, looked from Wyatt to Allison, and said, "Wait just a minute. I'll be right back."

Allison watched Bat dart into the saloon, and grinned, drawing one of his guns. "Looks like your dandified little friend's run off on you."

"Dandified?" asked Bat. He stepped back through the Long Branch's door, the shotgun from under the bar cradled pointedly in his right arm.

Wyatt rested a hand atop the hilt of his own gun, and smiled at Allison. "I'm real sorry about your friend, Mister Allison," he said. Which was true, as far as it went. "His death was an unfortunate accident."

"Try and fire those guns at one of us," Bat added, "and yours won't be." He patted the shotgun's barrel.

"So," Wyatt continued, "You might want to put that gun away and head on out of town. Then we can all forget this entire thing ever happened."

Allison looked from Bat's shotgun to Wyatt's holstered Colt and nodded slightly. "Yeah," he said. "An unfortunate accident. Real shame. I think I'll just be going now." He turned and hurried away down the street, not running, but definitely walking more quickly than normal.

Wyatt and Bat were silent for a long moment, watching him.

"Well," Bat finally said, "that was anticlimactic."

* * *

**Notes:** Clay Allison was a real western "celebrity," a gunslinger famous for his quick temper and for shooting at least two lawmen. He really did have a run in with Wyatt in Dodge, which, according to an interview with Wyatt in the _San Francisco Examiner_, went pretty much like it did here. Dora Hand is also real, and was the inspiration for the character of Miss Kitty, on the seemingly unending tv show _Gunsmoke_. Since we were unable to locate a photograph of Miss Hand, we decided to make her look like the red-headed Kitty in homage. 

Jonah Dobson and Dolores Conklin aren't real, though Dobson owes his last name to a certain contemporary religious leader (Spongebob is gay, we tell you! Gay and evil!). His speeches are (stereotyped) imitations of both nineteenth and early twentieth century temperance workers. Doc and Bat's nasty comments on Methodism are based on common nineteenth century suspicions about Evangelical religion.

For the curious, the Bible verses cited in this chapter are, in order: Zephaniah 3:2, Zephaniah 3:5, 1 Corinthians 6:10, Proverbs 20:1, Isaiah 22:13 (quoted by Doc), and 1 Corinthians 15:33-34.

**Doc's hair:** for the curious, no, he didn't really have long hair in real life. We threw it in because a) of the anime influence we originally wanted the story have (the angsty, doomed character always has long hair) and b) because we both like long hair.


	5. The First Stone, part II

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Buena Vista Pictures, Paramount Studios, and… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual historical figures and events, and partially based on our own hours of twisted fantasies produced by seeing _Tombstone_ one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.

**Posted By:** **Elspeth** and **Pixyofthestyx**  
**Ships:** Doc/Kate, Doc/Wyatt, Virgil/Allie, Morgan/Louisa, Bat/random chick. Dobson/self-righteousness. The list goes on and on.  
**Warnings:** This instalment of Gunslinger contains profanity, drinking, violence, historical inaccuracy, lots of Bible quotes, temperance workers, and slash. It does not contain hot sex. Sorry.

**Gunslinger: Dodge City**

_Part Five: The First Stone, part II._

When Virgil arrived for his shift at the jail Thursday morning, he found Jonah Dobson preaching across the street.

"Brothers, you must open your hearts and let Jesus in. Only He can show you the sins hidden within your souls."

Virgil had been keeping a weather eye on Reverend Dobson ever since he'd first hit town. There was just something about the preacher that made him uneasy. He might be preaching temperance and morality, but his sermons were still stirring people up. And now he had gotten hooked up with the Conklins, and that wouldn't be healthy for anyone.

Least of all the Dodge City peacekeeping commission, if they had to listen to him go on all day. And if he stayed where he was, they were going to; the man's lungs were certainly powerful enough to let him be heard from inside the jail.

"Look around you!" Dobson invited his listeners passionately. Virgil chose not to look. He had seen more of Dodge than Dobson, in his five-day stay, had likely even glanced at.

"This town labors under the weight of its sin. Its very leaders profit from the vices of its citizens, tempting those whom they should guide into saloons and dance halls. Do not succumb to these temptations, for they are the snares laid by Satan to pull you away from God and into poverty and degradation. Even those meant to protect you associate with the darker elements of society; gamblers, saloonkeepers, and fallen women!" Dobson flung one arm dramatically towards the jail, and Virgil turned to see Wyatt and Holliday standing by the building's door, pointedly ignoring the show.

Holliday snickered visibly and jabbed an elbow into Wyatt's side, then tried unsuccessfully to duck out of the way as Wyatt reached out and ruffled his hair.

"Cut it out! Don't think I won't shoot you."

"Yeah, sure you will."

There were moments when Virgil suspected that he was the only Earp brother who had managed to mature beyond the age of fourteen. Wyatt might be all of twenty-eight, but occasionally, it was hard to tell.

Suppressing the urge to groan, he turned a deaf ear to the rest of Dobson's pointed ranting and strode toward the jail, taking hold of Wyatt's arm as he passed him and hauling him inside.

Although Virgil had not intended it, Holliday followed along as well, since he was apparently attached to Wyatt by an invisible string.

Clearly, none of Dodge's peacekeepers had anything better to do this morning than sit around the jail, because although it was Morgan's shift, Bat was sitting behind the desk, bowler hat tilted at a jaunty angle and feet propped up atop a crisp new stack of Dolores Conklin's letters of complaint. Morgan was standing by the window, gazing out at the sky with a peculiar dreamy look on his face. He had obviously found some new girl to moon over.

Sometimes, Virgil felt very old.

"What are all of you doing here?" Bat asked.

"It's my shift," Virgil said. "What are you doing here? You weren't supposed to come in until this afternoon."

"It's my jail," Bat said. "I can come in whenever I want to. And why is Holliday in my jail? He serves no purpose. Unless you've arrested him. Have you arrested him?" He sat up a little straighter, looking hopeful.

"No," Wyatt said. "He was heckling Dobson." He grinned. "You're in here hiding from him, aren't you?"

"Of course not," Bat scoffed. "I never hide. And anyway, he was talking to Mrs. Conklin."

"So, you were hiding from her. That's a real improvement, Bat."

"I don't hide from her," Bat insisted, though everyone in the room knew it was a lie.

Virgil had no notion why she intimidated Bat so much. She was bothersome, sure, but she was basically just a woman with no children who didn't have enough to occupy her time. Running Edgar Conklin's dry goods store for him didn't begin to consume all of her energies, so she expended the rest of them trying to run everything else.

Virgil dislodged Bat from the chair, ignoring the way he ostentatiously limped over to the wall to join Morgan, and began sorting through the muddy complaints. One of them was about saloons, one of them was about dance halls, one of them was about Bat, one concerned her neighbor's dog, and one was about Dog Kelly, though what Dolores Conklin thought the peacekeeping commission could _do_ about the fact that the Mayor owned saloons, he didn't know.

Everyone else continued to stand around, Bat and Morgan by the window and Wyatt and Holliday by the gun case, which was probably not the best thing to have Holliday standing next to. He was leaning against the corner formed by the side of the gun case and the wall, talking to Wyatt, but still, having him that close to that many weapons, even unloaded weapons, made Virgil twitchy.

"You still taking Allie to see the opera tonight, Virge?" Morgan asked. He was still looking out the window, God knew at what since there was nothing on that side of the jail but the vacant lot that separated them from the tobacco shop next door.

"Yeah, she's been wanting to go." Virgil wasn't much of a man for opera himself—he preferred it when they sang in English—but Allie loved music of any kind, and every time a new musician or theater company performed at the courthouse or Saratoga saloon, he made a point of taking her.

"Oh good," Morgan said brightly. "I think I'll come too, and take Louisa."

Virgil could almost hear his plans for a romantic evening die.

"Great idea, Morg," Wyatt said. "Maybe I'll come along, too."

And the romantic evening alone with Allie in the city courthouse was dead.

"Who's Louisa?" Bat asked.

"Oh God," Wyatt groaned, "don't get him started."

"She's wonderful," Morgan announced brightly. "I met her last week when she came in with a complaint. She's sweet, and she has a wonderful sense of humor, and her eyes are the same color as the sky in the morning."

"You do realize that she's a, a…" Wyatt trailed off, gesturing vaguely with one hand.

"I think the word Wyatt is looking for here is prostitute," Doc said. He was still leaning against the gun cabinet, arms folded across his chest. He coughed, and straightened up slightly, then settled his shoulders back against the side of the cabinet.

"Not that that's necessarily a bad thing," Bat said. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with a woman who's got a bit of experience. Right, Holliday?"

Holliday, for a wonder, ignored him. Morgan did not.

"Louisa's a lady anyway," he said. "And I'm asking her to come to the theater with me, so you can stop talking about her 'experience.'"

Virgil did his best to ignore them all, and continued shifting through the papers. Jake Bower wanted to make sure that the peacekeeping commission was aware that Wyatt and Bat had crossed the Arkansas River toll bridge without paying three weeks ago, and therefore owed him fifty cents in tolls, plus a ten cent late-fee that Virgil was pretty sure he was making up.

"Yes, but I think what Wyatt's wondering," Doc smirked, "is whether you will be paying for the privilege of her company this evening."

"Yeah, but I wasn't going to put it into so many words."

Morgan glared at Wyatt, looking much the same as he had as a kid when Wyatt had teased him about being shorter and bullied him into doing his chores. "You're just jealous that you don't have a girl to take to the theatre. And I'm not paying her. We don't have a business arrangement; we have a loving relationship."

Virgil finally gave up on trying to retain his dignity, and allowed himself to be sucked into the conversation. "Morgan, didn't you just meet this young woman last week?"

"Haven't the rest of you ever heard of love at first sight?"

"Nope," Bat said.

"Oh, come on," Morgan said defensively, "Virgil, you're married. You believe in love at first sight, right?"

Virgil shook his head. "Took me a month before I was sure about Allie." Actually, he'd been sure the first time she tried to cook for him. The biscuits had been horribly burned, and when he'd foolishly commented on it, she'd thrown one at him and told him to make his own dinner if he didn't like hers. He'd actually made an attempt, but they'd both gotten distracted.

"Doc?" Morgan tried desperately.

"Doc doesn't believe in anything," Wyatt said. He grinned at Doc, who narrowed his eyes in mock irritation.

"I beg to differ. I think love at first sight is eminently possibly."

There were three wanted posters at the bottom of the pile of papers, one for a Sam Bass, mid-twenties and mustached, who had sold off a herd of cattle north of Dodge and never handed the money over to the herd's original owners, one for five men from Missouri named Elder who had been robbing banks in eastern Kansas, and one for John Wesley Hardin, who was still running around shooting people in Texas. Various lawmen there kept sending those in in hopes that Hardin might ride through Dodge and become their problem.

"See?" Morgan said. "Even Doc thinks Louisa and I were meant for each other."

"I didn't exactly say that."

"Yeah, well." Morgan folded his arms and leaned one shoulder against the wall. "Once the rest of you meet her, you'll see. She's perfect."

Bat rolled his eyes, Wyatt shook his head, and Doc smirked.

"Ah, I see." Doc clasped his heads in front of his chest in a manner Virgil suspected was intentionally girlish. "You are Louisa!" he exclaimed, sounding suspiciously like something from a Brontë novel. "She is always, always in your mind. She is more yourself than you are!" He flung his arms out dramatically, and continued gleefully in the same vein, "From the first day you met, you've know that all you want is to spend the rest of your life at her side. She's everything pure and noble that you will never be, and when she smiles at you," his voice dropped to a softer tone, "it makes you feel like you're worth something after all." Holliday had folded his arms over his chest and was staring off into the distance, speaking almost in a whisper. "And when she's standing next to you, it's easier to breathe."

"Doc?" Wyatt asked, after a moment, looking vaguely confused.

Holliday's eyes flicked over to Wyatt, and then he dropped his gaze to the floor and began studying the toes of his boots.

"You don't have to make fun of me," Morgan said, frowning now.

Under his moustache, Bat's lips twitched upwards in the smallest of grins. "I never knew Kate was so all-fired special."

"Kate?" Holliday asked blankly. "Who said anything about Kate? We were discussing the incomparable Miss Louisa." He inclined his head towards Morgan, and flicked one hand in his general direction.

"I don't know why Wyatt puts up with you," Morgan told him.

"I don't know why I put up with any of you," Virgil announced. "If you've got nothing better to do than stand around and talk, you could at least do some work while you're at it." He nodded at the three cells behind him. "The cells need sweeping out, and the guns in that cabinet need cleaning and oiling."

"I've been in here all morning already," Morgan said. He straightened up from his slouch against the wall and started for the door. "I need to go find Louisa and ask her about going to the theater with me."

Sorry, Virge." Wyatt shrugged, and turned to follow Morgan, tapping Holliday on the shoulder to get him to follow. "Doc and I were going to go for a ride."

"You were going to go for a ride. I am going to return to the Great Western to see if anyone in this town is in need of my professional services. Or possibly stay here and watch Masterson play with the broom."

"I'll clean the guns," Bat announced immediately, "but I get the desk."

"Come on, Doc," Wyatt was saying, as the two of them walked out the door after Morgan, "you _know_ nobody's going to show up wanting their teeth pulled. A ride will be fun. You should spend some time outside once in a while."

"I don't like 'outside…'"

Virgil unlocked the desk's top drawer and dug out the keys to the gun cabinet, handing them to Bat. "Don't even think about touching the triggers on any of them," he ordered. Bat had a bad habit of filing down the trigger mechanisms of guns so that they would go off at the slightest pressure, making them easier to shoot, but also far more likely to go off by accident. No doubt it seemed like a good idea if you were twenty-four.

Bat took three strides across the room to the gun cabinet and opened the lock, then pulled down a long-barreled shotgun. "I'd like to take this moment to remind you that, technically, you're _my_ deputy."

Virgil abandoned the desk chair to Bat and picked up the broom, heading for the closest cell. "Doesn't make fiddling with firing mechanisms a good idea."

Bat pulled off his coat, probably to avoid getting gun oil on the sleeves. He began disassembling the shotgun, head bent over his work so that only the back of his bowler hat was visible.

Virgil sighed, and started to sweep out the cells.

* * *

Dodge's courthouse felt distinctly different when you weren't there to give evidence. For one thing, all of the people who had crowded in to hear the opera this evening actually wanted to be there. Well, except for P.L. Beatty's thirteen year old son, who was slumped in a chair next to his mother radiating sullen resentment, and tugging uncomfortably at his necktie. 

Morgan and Miss Louisa were certainly happy to be there, but Wyatt had feeling that they would have been just as happy to be standing in the middle of a field somewhere. The way they were gazing at each other, they probably didn't even notice that the opera was about to start.

What with the two of them, and with Virgil and Allie beyond them, steadfastly ignoring everything but the music and each other, Wyatt felt like the odd man out.At least Bat had taken his lady friend—whom Wyatt was pretty sure he'd seen on stage at one of Dodge's dancehalls—away to a more secluded corner, possibly to give the other two couples more privacy, but more likely because he wanted more privacy himself.

Everybody had someone on their arm tonight but him.

Doc had said something about intending to come, but so far there was no sign of him or Kate. Wyatt hoped this didn't mean that Doc had gotten sick again. He had seemed better this morning, but by the way he'd been leaning against Bat's gun cabinet in the jail, he still wasn't all that steady on his feet.

Then the opera started, and Wyatt was kept busy enough trying to figure out what was going on that he forgot to be uncomfortable. The Richings-Bernard Grand English Opera Company was turning out a remarkably good performance despite their lack of a real stage. Up at the front of the courthouse, where the judge usually presided, the two female singers were languishing on the witness stand, singing mournfully. Possibly, they were singing about how bored they were. Or maybe one of them was in love. Or dying.

The first act went on, and the two bored young ladies decided to dress up as farm girls and go to a party. Then, they met two young men dressed as farmers, and they all proceeded to sing at one another, clearly arguing about something. Since they were arguing in Italian, Wyatt wasn't quite sure what that something was, but it involved lots of extravagant gestures and high pitches held for a very long time. At least it sounded pretty.

Someone coughed behind him, and Wyatt turned in his chair to see Doc standing in the aisle, with Kate beside him. Doc's cravat was crooked, and Kate's mass of pinned-up curls was coming loose from its careful arrangement. Which might explain the lateness.

"So," Doc drawled, "have our heroines gotten themselves trapped in servitude yet?"

"That's what they were arguing about?" Wyatt grinned. "Yeah, just now."

"Ah, good. Then Martha hasn't sung 'The Last Rose of Summer' yet. Kate wanted to hear that part." Doc smiled back, a boyish grin that made his face look softer and less gaunt, and pulled a chair out for Kate. Once she was seated, he dropped into the chair beside Wyatt and settled back to watch the opera.

"Hey, Doc, Kate," Morgan said, hauling his attention away from Louisa long enough to notice the newcomers. He nodded towards the 'stage.' "They're going to sing 'The Last Rose of Summer?' I didn't know one of those German composers wrote that."

"He didn't," Doc said. He coughed, then added, "Apparently, Herr Flotow just liked the song."

"Shhh," Kate whispered. She leaned in close to Doc, so that her lips nearly brushed his ear, managing to give everybody present a glimpse down the front of her dress as she did so. "I'm trying to listen."

"You want a translation, darlin'?" Doc asked.

Yep, there was definitely a reason they'd been late.

Mrs. Conklin, who was seated a good two rows ahead of them, turned in her seat to glare and make shushing motions.

Doc, completely undeterred by the weight of her disapproval, spent the rest of the second act providing Wyatt with one line summations of all the songs. Since he didn't actually speak Italian, Wyatt strongly suspected that he was making everything up.

Sure enough, the prima donna actually did sing, 'The Last Rose of Summer.' And she sang it in English, which meant that everyone in the theater—well, courthouse—could understand it.

As the male lead clasped her in his arms and began to sing about his overwhelming love for her—Wyatt didn't need Doc to 'translate' that one—Kate hid a yawn behind one lace-mitted hand.

"If this is an opera, why hasn't anyone been stabbed yet?" she asked.

"This is _Martha_, not _Tosca_," Doc said, sounding vaguely regretful. Kate leaned towards him, her breasts not-so-subtly brushing his arm, and whispered something Wyatt was grateful he couldn't hear in Doc's ear. Doc turned to meet her gaze, eyebrows raised and clearly preparing to say something snide, and Kate bent her head down and kissed him on the edge of the jaw, then started trailing a line of kisses down his neck.

Two rows of seats ahead, Mrs. Conklin looked on in horror, murmuring something shocked to her husband—and, Wyatt saw in slowly dawning horror, to the town commissioner sitting next to him. The one that didn't like Bat.

"Kate!" Doc hissed, ducking away. "We're in public."

The commissioner was frowning in a way that boded ill for Bat, Wyatt, and their chances of ever being reappointed as Dodge's marshals. Mrs. Conklin was still whispering to him.

"What?" Kate was asking, "Are you _ashamed _of me?"

Wyatt pulled his attention away from Bat's immanent political downfall to find Kate and Doc frowning at one another.

Doc made quieting gestures. "Wyatt doesn't need any more trouble," he said, and waved a hand in the general direction of the Conklins and the commissioner. "This sort of thing isn't exactly going to help his and Masterson's reputations. Especially now that they've got that preacher accusing them of 'associating with society's darker elements.'"

"'Wyatt doesn't need,'" Kate repeated in an angry hiss. "Why is it always Wyatt?"

Wyatt was suddenly intensely, deeply grateful that Bat wasn't here witnessing this. In fact, he rather wished that the entire courthouse weren't here witnessing this. He forcibly pulled his gaze away from the spectacle Doc and Kate were creating and stared straight ahead, trying to pretend that he was sitting there alone. It didn't work. He could still hear them.

"Because Wyatt is my friend," Doc said, voice firm even though he was speaking barely above a whisper.

"And what does that make me?" Kate demanded, slightly too loudly. People other than the Conklins were now turning around and looking.

Doc said nothing, simply looked down, shoulders slumping, and Kate stood up jerkily and turned on her heel with a swish of dark red sateen. She didn't quite stomp out of the room, but she came as close as someone wearing a floor-length skirt could.

Wyatt, painfully conscious of the disapproving eyes fixed on him—and Virgil, Allie, and Morgan by extension—turned to Doc, intending to say something, he wasn't sure what, to express his overwhelming irritation.

Doc was still slightly hunched over, one hand pressed against his side. "Sorry," he started, and then was interrupted by a fit of coughing. "Sorry about that, Wyatt," he managed to say, before succumbing to the spasms.

Mrs. Conklin was now glaring harder than ever before. Morgan and Louisa were ignoring her in favor of the love duet on stage. Virgil was glaring back.

Wyatt laid a hand on Doc's shoulder, feeling the delicate shape of bones beneath the wool of his coat. "It's all right," he said. They were both silent for a second while Doc got his breath back.

"So," Wyatt said softly, "what are they singing about now?"

* * *

In retrospect, going to the theater last evening had probably been a mistake. Doc had been feeling better the previous morning than he had for a week, but now his chest was tight and painful again, Kate was over by the bar flirting with every man who came near and making certain that Doc could see her doing it, and to make matters worse, he had 'The Last Rose of Summer' stuck in his head. 

Also, it was entirely possible that he was in love with Wyatt.

Well, 'love' was probably too strong a word, Doc decided. He uncorked the bottle of whisky at his elbow—Beeson had long since learned better than to try and sell it to him by the glass—and poured himself a shot. Wyatt was nothing more than a friend. Possibly his only friend, but that was no reason to pretend that mere friendship was something that it wasn't. Of course, Wyatt was a good friend, which was why drinking with him, or playing cards, or just sitting and talking with him was pleasant. The broadness of his shoulders and the way he could face down troublemakers through sheer force of personality had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever.

Doc drained his whisky, savoring the heat of it as it spread through his chest. He coughed, wincing at the ache in his ribs, then refilled his glass and corked the bottle again. The golden brown alcohol was almost the same color as Wyatt's eyes.

'Oh God,' Doc groaned inwardly. 'Can't I die a little faster?' He rested his head in his hands for a moment, suppressing the urge to thump it against the table so that he could pound the overly sentimental thoughts out. He was turning into the heroine of a goddamned Brontë novel. '_When he's standing next to me, it's easier to breathe._' He couldn't believe he had actually said that out load. In the presence of other people.

Over at the bar, Kate had managed to persuade one of the other patrons to buy her a drink. She saluted Doc with it, just to make certain that he knew she could find another man whenever she wanted and didn't really need him, then took a sip. When he had returned from the theater last night, she had been in the Dodge House hotel waiting for him. She had made her opinion of Wyatt very clear, and then proceed to demonstrate exactly _why_ it would benefit him to pay more attention to her than to Wyatt. It had been a very enjoyable demonstration, so why the hell couldn't he get Wyatt out of his head? The man just stuck there, like that deplorable Irish ballad about dying roses.

At some point in the past two months, Wyatt's good opinion had become more important to him than anyone's had been since he left Georgia. Than anyone since Melanie. It was damned inconvenient.

There were sounds of a disturbance outside the saloon's door, and Doc looked up from his not-remotely-the-same-color-as-Wyatt's-eyes whisky to see the Reverend Jonah Dobson making his decidedly unwelcome return to the Long Branch.

Lovely. What a pity Dobson didn't know about his new obsession with Wyatt. Then the odious man would have a whole new set of reasons to condemn him to the fires of hell. The kind of things that made mere drinking pale in comparison.

Chalk Beeson, who had an almost uncanny ability to sense trouble entering his bar, looked up as Dobson strode determinedly through the door and groaned. "oh, Christ, it's him." He left off pouring one of Kate's admirers a drink and turned to snap out an order at his nearest employee. "Go get Earp or Masterson. I want that man thrown out for good. Moralizing busybody; I'd like to comb his hair backwards."

Dobson halted in front of the bar and turned to face the room, drawing himself up to his full height. He was nearly as tall as Wyatt, and therefore presented quite an impressive picture indeed.

"Brothers," he began, "I beseech you, leave this den of error and veniality and return to your wives and families."

From the back of the room, someone hooted, "Hey, Preacher, ain't you got a wife?"

Dobson chose not to dignify that with a response. "Abandon this place and its sordid temptresses." He gestured accusingly at the far end of the room, where two of Miss Hand's girls were negotiating business with some cowhands. Neither of them, Doc noted, was Morgan's new lady love. "Fallen women, purveyors of sexual perversion, bearing the rotten fruits of their ill labor. Would you carry sin back from them to contaminate the true flowers of womanhood in your marriage bed?"

"Hell," one of Kate's new swains called to the heckler in the back, "iff'n he could get himself a woman, he wouldn't need to jaw at us about sex so much."

Dobson glared at the man, reddish eyebrows drawing together over his pale eyes. "There speaks a man misled by vice."

There was a chorus of snickering, and one of the heckler's friends began to detail exactly how misled his comrade was. Doc drained his glass, poured himself a new drink, and settled back to watch the show. Perhaps this wouldn't be so unpleasant an experience after all.

And then Dobson noticed Kate, leaning languidly against the bar beside the second heckler. In that particular corset, she was rather difficult to miss.

"You should shun this woman as you would shun a venomous snake," he said, levelling his gaze on Kate and her two attempts to make Doc jealous. "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?" he quoted. "Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot?"

Kate pulled her arm out of the grasp of the taller of her two admirers and stepped toward Dobson. "Who are you calling a snake, preacher man?" she demanded. "What I do is no concern of yours."

Dobson looked past Kate as if she were not even there, as if merely conversing with her would somehow contaminate him. "Know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body with her?" he continued. "For two, saith he, shall be one flesh."

Each of Dobson's sermons, Doc decided, was more irritating than the last. "Ask any man here if he cares," he said evenly.

Dobson turned, frowning disapprovingly when he saw Doc. "Young man," he said, "I grieve to see you here once again." He picked up Doc's bottle of whisky and read the label, then shook his head sadly.

"What a coincidence," Doc said. "_I_ am grieved to see _you_ here once again." He smiled at Dobson. He could tell by the man's expression that it was not a nice smile, which was good, because he didn't intend it to be. "Now, if you would be kind enough to return my whisky?"

"I can tell by your speech that you are an educated man," Dobson said pompously. He set the whisky bottle down on a neighbouring table, where it was instantly snatched up by a gleeful cowhand. "It is not too late to turn aside from the course you have chosen. To forsake the company of such denigrates as these." He raised a hand and pointed directly at Kate.

Off to his left, Doc could hear footsteps coming up the Long Branch's steps. From the length of the stride, it sounded like Wyatt. For once he didn't turn to check, instead keeping his gaze fixed on Dobson. What gave the man the right to make those sorts of comments about Kate? As she said, it was no concern of his.

"Well, according to St. Paul, I'm every bit as denigrate as she is. One flesh, and all of that." Doc widened his smile a bit and brushed the edge of his coat open just far enough to give Dobson a glimpse of the ivory hilt of his .45. "If I were you, I would take care what I said. I would truly hate to have to take offence."

Dobson's grey-green eyes fixed on Doc's gun, and he drew in a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. "You cannot silence the truth with violence, young man." He turned to Wyatt, who had been standing by the door, arms folded, looking on. "Marshal Earp, this man is threatening me. I assume it is your duty to deal with that sort of thing."

Kate gave Dobson a look that dripped with scorn and extricated herself from the two gentlemen—to offer them a title they didn't deserve—at the bar. She glided across the room to Doc's table and stood behind him, draping herself over his shoulders. Dobson's face filled with disgust. It was a beautiful expression.

"Well, now, I wouldn't say I heard any threats." Wyatt offered Dobson a pleasant smile. Doc could tell the expression was utterly false. "Doc here was just asking you to be more polite. Can't say I disagree with him, either. A man shouldn't go around insulting ladies."

"Or Kate," Doc added. Kate pulled away from him and smacked him on the shoulder.

"Marshal," Dobson persevered, "that man has a gun. I was given to understand that that was illegal on this side of the railroad line."

"Gun?" Wyatt looked Doc up and down, then shrugged. "I don't see a gun." And of course, he didn't, because Doc had by this point pulled his coat closed again.

"Of course not," Dobson said carefully, as if speaking to a slow child. "It's under his coat. Do your duty and confiscate it."

"Sorry, Reverend. I've got to see a weapon in order to confiscate it." Wyatt grinned at Doc, who found himself grinning back.

Dobson glanced from Doc to Wyatt and frowned. "Mr. Holliday seems to be on friendly terms with every lawman in town. Nevertheless," and he took a step toward Wyatt, in an ill-advised attempt to out-loom him, "I insist that you do your duty and cease this blatant favouritism. I have been warned about the corrupt practices of this town's officials, but it would sadden me greatly to find those warnings true." Clearly, Dobson had been talking to the Conklins.

There was a tight pain building in the middle of Doc's chest, but he fought down the urge to cough. He would be damned if he'd give Dobson another chance to look at him with pitying eyes and explain how the Good Lord cared more about his soul than his lungs.

"It's Doctor Holliday," Wyatt corrected him, "and my duty at the moment is actually to throw you out of Chalk's saloon. Besides which, I'm not real inclined to inconvenience a friend for your sake at the moment, seeing how you pretty much sold me out to Allison the other day."

The ache in Doc's chest suddenly became insignificant beside his desire to blow a hole through Dobson's head. "He did _what_?" he asked. His hand was on his revolver before he could think, ready to draw it and explain to the preacher exactly why one did not sell Wyatt out to crazy gunslingers, and especially not to psychotic killers like Clay Allison.

Kate's hand closed around his wrist, squeezing in a silent warning.

Wyatt held his hands up, palms out. "Doc," he said, "you know if you start something, Bat will blame me."

Under normal circumstances, Doc wouldn't have backed off simply because Wyatt was waving at him to calm down, but he had already caused Wyatt enough trouble last night with that scene in the courthouse. He lifted his hand free of his gun, and Kate released his wrist. "Bat doesn't like him either," he pointed out.

Wyatt grinned. "Yeah, but he'll still blame me." He turned back to Dobson. "Now, are you going to leave politely, or am I going to have to throw you out?"

Dobson straightened his cuffs and adjusted the set of his hat, demonstrating that he was leaving his own good time and not because Wyatt was forcing him to, and smiled pityingly at Doc. "Remember, young man, it is never too late to repent and turn to God. The Lord is forgiving."

Doc glared at him, and seriously considered the merits of drawing on the sanctimonious bastard anyway, inconvenient for Wyatt or not. "The Lord may be forgiving, but I'm not." He just managed to force the words out past the ache in his chest. He was not going to cough in front of Dobson.

Once the doors had closed on the overbearing, Bible-thumping sonuvabitch, Wyatt pulled out a chair and sat down next to Doc. "You keep flashing that shiny gun of yours in public, and I'm going to have to take it away."

Doc didn't answer. The coughing he had been trying to suppress finally broke free, and his lungs tried to turn themselves inside out.

Kate patted him on the shoulder and left, hopefully to get him a drink.

Someone's hand was warm against the middle of Doc's back. Wyatt. Luckily, he was coughing too hard to really appreciate it.

"What did Dobson say to get you so riled up?" Wyatt asked, when the coughing had trailed to a halt and Doc could breathe again. His hand was still against Doc's back. Doc chose not to remind him of this.

"He took objection to Kate's choice of professions."

Wyatt nodded. "Yeah, That'd do it." He looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked. "Does it ever bother you? Her going off with other men?"

Doc shrugged. "She only does it when she's mad at me. Or could when she could use the money. Besides," he grinned, and quoted the last lines of that damnable song, "'who would inhabit this bleak world alone?'"

Wyatt groaned, and pulled his hand away from Doc's back to punch him lightly on the shoulder.

Kate came back then, a new bottle of whisky in hand, and took the seat on Doc's other side. She poured herself a shot, and then poured Doc one. "Here," she said, "Beeson says it's on the house, and not to hesitate next time on his account."

"Thank you, darlin'." Doc accepted the shot glass and tossed its contents back. "If I see the good reverend again, it will be my pleasure." He picked the new bottle up and held it out to Wyatt questioningly.

Wyatt shook his head. "Thanks, but I've got to get back to work. There's a cattle drive hitting town soon." He pushed his chair back and stood up. "Kate." He nodded at her. She pretended not to notice.

Wyatt clapped Doc on the shoulder and left. Doc stared after him for a moment, then realised he was acting like a Brontë heroine again and got up to find a card game.

* * *

Initially, Virgil had been worried that the Reverend Dobson might cause trouble in Dodge. Now, after the scene he and Holliday had apparently caused in the Long Branch, Virgil was _certain_ that the man was going to cause trouble. What with the cowhands who were trickling into town ahead of the cattle drives, and the men who were going to flood the town when the cattle actually arrived—which was going to happen any day now—the preacher was a riot waiting to happen.

Which was why Virgil and Wyatt were currently trying to locate the good reverend, to suggest that it might be healthier for him to leave town. Bat had offered his suspiciously enthusiastic assistance, but it had been decided that sending deputy marshals to talk to Dobson instead of a chief marshal who actively hated him would be more diplomatic. Holliday had offered his services as well, and for a moment, Wyatt had actually seemed to be considering it. Virgil had put a stop to that idea quickly.

After checking the front porch of every saloon north of the deadline, they finally found Dobson leaving Leonard's restaurant. He looked to be in a good mood, but the moment he set eyes on Wyatt, the goodwill vanished.

"Mister Earp," he said, tiredly. "Good afternoon. Did you want something?" he asked, in the manner of a man who clearly hoped that the answer would be no.

The question was obviously directed at Wyatt, but Virgil cut in before his brother could say anything tactless. Holliday was getting to be a bad influence on him. "We're sorry to bother you, Reverend, but we thought you should know that there's a pretty big cattle drive headed into town."

"Yes, I had noticed an increased in the number of misguided revellers." Dobson said. He folded his arms across his chest, and looked at the two of them sternly. "However, I'm sure you aren't here to point out souls in need of saving."

"Not so much, no," Wyatt said. "Look, when those cowhands hit town, they're going to be thirsty, and they're going to be tired, and they're going to want a drink and a woman, likely in about that order. And they're not going to take kindly to someone telling them they can't have either of those things."

"Might be for the best if you left," Virgil added.

"On the contrary, it's all the more reason for me to—"

Wyatt's jaw took on that determined set it always got just before he did something rash, and he interrupted Dobson mid-sentence. "Not to mention that if you go back in the Long Branch one more time, Chalk Beeson is going to break a whisky bottle over your head."

"I'm afraid I have already given the patrons of Mr. Beeson's establishment up for lost," Dobson said. He actually sounded regretful, which made Virgil feel just a bit guilty about essentially strong-arming the man out of town. But not very.

"Reverend," he said, "we'd count it as a favor if you'd leave. It'll only cause trouble if you stick around."

Dobson looked from Virgil to Wyatt and sighed, shoulders slumping. "I suppose there truly are those who refuse to be saved. Gentlemen," he nodded at them, and made ready to go. "I shall remember this town in my prayers. Perhaps, in time…" and he tipped his hat to them and walked off down the street.

* * *

**Authors' Notes:** So. We've finally used the word "delicate" in reference to Doc. It's official. We're going to Hell. If, y'know, the fact that we're now officially writing historical rps weren't already ensuring that. Also, it has come to our attention that the past two chapters have both ended with anticlimaxes, and that this one is essentially conversation porn (though we stuck in an argument, just for S.J.H.). We swear, the next chapter will have action. 

Herr Fredrich von Flotow and his operatic masterpiece really did exist, and _Martha_ really was performed in Dodge City in 1877 (in the courthouse). Sam Bass and John Wesley Hardin were real western outlaws, and P.L. Beatty was the chief of Dodge City's fire brigade. Whether he really had a thirteen-year-old son is anybody's guess. Chalk Beeson was the owner and manager of the Long Branch saloon, and apparently had both a low tolerance for stupidity and a gift for colorful phrases. 'Melanie' is Melanie Holliday, Doc's cousin, who joined a convent after he went west, and was apparently the most perfect Victorian woman ever. She's said to be the inspiration for the character of Melanie in Margaret Mitchell's _Gone With the Wind_.

The Reverend Jonah Dobson still isn't real.

* * *

**The Last Rose of Summer**

Lyrics: _Sir John Stevenson, 1761-1833_

Words: _Thomas Moore, 1779-1852_

'Tis the last rose of summer,  
Left blooming alone,  
All her lovely companions  
Are faded and gone.  
No flower of her kindred,  
No rose bud is nigh,  
To reflect back her blushes,  
Or give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,  
To pine on the stem;  
Since the lovely are sleeping,  
Go sleep thou with them;  
'Thus kindly I scatter  
Thy leaves o'er the bed  
Where thy mates of the garden  
Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow  
When friendships decay,  
And from love's shining circle  
The gems drop away!  
When true hearts lie withered  
And fond ones are flown  
Oh! who would inhabit  
This bleak world alone?


	6. The Sons of Ma Elder

**DISCLAIMER: **This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Buena Vista Pictures, Paramount Studios, and… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual historical figures and events, and partially based on our own hours of twisted fantasies produced by seeing _Tombstone _one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.

**Posted By:** **Elspeth **and **Pixyofthestyx **

**Ships: **Doc/Kate, Doc/Wyatt, Virgil/Allie, Morgan/Louisa. The list goes on and on.  
**Warnings: **This instalment of Gunslinger contains profanity, drinking, violence, historical inaccuracy, and non-heterosexual touching. It does not contain hot sex. Sorry.

**Gunslinger: Dodge City **

_Part Six: The Sons of Ma Elder_

"Here's my fee, Marshall Earp." Chalk Beeson took a bill from the Long Branch's register and handed it to Wyatt.

"Thanks." Wyatt folded the money and stuck it in his inside coat pocket with the other saloon keepers' licensing fees. "Nice change to have someone pay without complaining."

"Well, I figure you boys have earned your keep this month, and since your salary comes out of Kelley's taxes…" Beeson shrugged and stroked the waxed ends of his moustache. "I'll likely earn it all back from your bar tabs anyway."

"Yeah, I guess you probably will," Wyatt said. He smiled at Beeson, who smiled back broadly. The Long Branch's proprietor had been extremely grateful that Dobson was no longer around to bother his customers. The peacekeepers' drinks had all been half price since they had chased the preacher out of town.

Wyatt's gaze shifted to the long mirror behind Beeson. Doc was playing a hand of cards at the table directly behind them, his back against the wall so that the mirror gave Wyatt a clear view of his face. He was wearing that pleased little smirk that meant he was cheating. He'd have to remember to point this out to Doc later, since Doc insisted that he didn't have any tells.

Doc glanced up, meeting Wyatt's eyes in the mirror, and smiled at him. For a moment, he looked downright innocent, and not at all like some one who was probably dealing from the bottom of the deck.

"What're you so happy about?" one of Doc's fellow card players demanded.

Doc's cheerful smile changed to something more predatory. "Anticipation. I call, gentlemen." And he spread his hand of cards out face up on the table.

For a moment, Wyatt was sure that the gunshot that echoed through the room had come from one of Doc's defeated opponents, that one of the men had realized he was being cheated and blown the gambler away, like Bat kept saying somebody would. Then he realized that the noise was nowhere near loud enough to have come from inside the Long Branch, and that he could still see a completely unharmed Doc in the mirror.

Doc had jumped to his feet, drawing the gun he was not supposed to have. One of his opponents had thrown himself out of his chair and taken refuge under the table.

"What in hell is that?" the man under the table yelped.

"A shotgun," Wyatt told him. At least, he was pretty sure it was a shotgun—it had been too loud to be a pistol. He was also pretty sure it had come from the direction of the bank. He turned away from the bar and grabbed Doc by the wrist. "Come on, Doc."

Doc pulled back against Wyatt's grip, grabbing for the pile of coins and bills in the center of the table. "At least let me collect my winnings first."

Wyatt ignored this and yanked Doc away from the table and towards the door. Somehow, Doc still managed to sweep up a handful of cash on the way, and as the two of them hit the street, he was trying to shove it into his inside coat pocket one-handed. "Let go of me!"

Wyatt let go. Doc holstered his Colt, then rubbed his wrist and glared.

"Sorry," Wyatt said. "I think that came from the bank. I could probably use some help…" he trailed off because Doc was still rubbing his wrist.

Doc looked up and grinned. "Asking is good, Wyatt." He drew his gun again, and the weapon's nickel plating gleamed in the sun. "Let us protect the good citizens of this towns' money." For a moment, Wyatt looked at that gleeful little smile and remembered why getting Doc to back you up wasn't necessarily the world's best idea. But they had wasted enough time already.

"Right," Wyatt said. He took off for the bank at a run, trusting that Doc would follow.

This being Dodge, the bank had already attracted a crowd. Wyatt shoved his way through the onlookers, Doc following at his heels. As the reached the building's steps, he saw Virgil pushing between two cowhands and past Three-Fingers Jack Danvers, one hand on his gun.

"What's going on, Wyatt?"

"Don't know," Wyatt said. "I was at the Long Branch collecting Beeson's license fee."

"There's a whole gang inside there," Three-Fingers Jack announced helpfully. He spit a stream of tobacco juice into the street and added, "Jim there says they got the manager in there with 'em."

"Great," Virgil sighed. He looked past Wyatt at Doc, and his frown deepened. "Why's he here?"

"Free entertainment," Doc announced cheerfully.

Wyatt ignored Doc—turning around to look at him would only encourage him—and glanced from Virgil to the bank. "You ready?"

"Just make sure Holliday doesn't shoot the hostage."

"Right. Doc?" Wyatt turned to see Doc grinning evilly, gun in hand. Doc thumbed the hammer back, and grinned wider. "Don't shoot the bank manager," Wyatt said.

And then Wyatt kicked the door in.

The three of them rushed into the bank to be greeted by the sight of Evans, the bank's cashier, kneeling on the floor by the safe while two men pointed guns at his head. Three more men were standing by the windows, each with a weapon in his hands. One of them had a massive, double-barreled shotgun. There were bits of plaster scattered across the floor, and a large chunk of the ceiling was gone, which explained the gunshot Wyatt had heard.

All of the guns were pointed straight at Wyatt, Virgil, and Doc.

"Y'all are gonna put those guns down and back out of here," the man holding the shotgun announced. "or we're gonna blow off the cashier here's head."

"And then you'll have no one to open the safe," Evans spat out, glaring up at the robbers. There was a red mark across his cheek that would be a bruise eventually; Wyatt guessed he had tried to fight back.

"He's got a point, Cole," one of the men guarding Evans said.

"Shut up, Billy."

Billy shut up.

"Don't be stupid, boys," Virgil said. He held one hand up, palm out, in a calming gesture. The other hand stayed down at his side, hovering over the handle of his gun. "No one has to get hurt here."

"Yeah," Cole said, hefting his shotgun, "not so long as Mister Smart-mouth here gives us our money and you let us leave all peaceable-like."

"Shoot him, and none of you will leave this room," Wyatt told him. He aimed his colt at Cole's chest, and tried not to think about the sounds George Hoy had made as he coughed out blood from his shot-up lungs. If this Cole, or any of his fellows, pulled the trigger on Evans, there wouldn't be any option left but to shoot them.

Virgil had his gun out now, and was holding it low by his side, the barrel pointed at the ground.

Doc's gun was trained on Billy. "I'd listen to him if I were you," he suggested. "The three of us can have the five of you on the ground before Mr. Evans there has finished twitching."

Evans turned a shade paler, and eyed Doc uneasily. His forehead glistened with sweat, and he had balled his hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

The five would-be bank robbers exchanged glances. Cole lifted one hand from the stock of his shotgun to scratch at his scraggly beard, thinking. For a long moment, nobody moved. Then,

"The hell with that!" Billy shouted. He yanked Evans off the ground and flung him at Doc, then fired his gun in Wyatt's general direction.

Evans collided with Doc, and the cashier's weight knocked Doc into the wall

Wyatt dodged sideways, and fired his own gun at Billy, missing him on purpose and hitting the safe, so that the bullet would make a nice, threatening sound. Billy threw himself forward, out of the way of the ricochet, and Wyatt grabbed him by the shoulders and thrust him at Virgil, then turned to chase the rest of the fleeing robbers out the door.

Doc pushed off from the wall and followed him, still holding his gun, which he had somehow managed not to drop when he'd been thrown into the wall.

The four remaining robbers pelted down the steps and around the side of the building. For reasons known only to God, the people clustered around the bank watching the show all stepped out of the way instead of trying to stop them.

Wyatt managed not to skid in the mud as he turned the corner. And then he saw the horses that were waiting, saddled, about thirty yards away. The horses that the bank robbers were going to reach before he could catch up with them.

"What about the money?" one of the robbers hollered, as they all dashed for their mounts.

"Forget the money!" Cole shouted.

"What about Billy?"

"Forget Billy!"

And then they were at the horses, scrambling into their saddles. One of them planted his hands on a horse's rump and vaulted into the saddle in one movement, losing his hat in the process.

Wyatt skidded to a halt as the horses galloped away from him, watching the four robbers—and one riderless horse—disappear down the street.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. He hated it when they got away. He especially hated it when the stupid ones got away.

Doc staggered to a stop beside Wyatt. He bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air. He coughed twice, a deep, harsh cough, and then straightened up, hugging his ribs. He took a step towards Wyatt and then stopped, going white and swaying on his feet.

Wyatt took him by the arm to make sure he didn't pitch over into the mud. "You okay?"

Doc stared at him for a second, blue eyes unfocused, then blinked and shook himself. "Perfectly. I just needed to catch my breath." He was still gasping for air, making the words breathy and hoarse.

"Right," Wyatt said. He tightened his hold on Doc's arm for a second, and then let go, but didn't step away. Just in case Doc hadn't quite finished catching his breath. "Guess we've got to go tell Virgil they got away."

"You're the lawman," Doc wheezed. "You tell him."

The two of them trudged empty-handed back around the bank to find Virgil tying their sole prisoner's wrists with a bandana. Billy the would-be bank robber was glaring resentfully at Virgil, at Mr. Evans, and at the various spectators who were treating his arrest as free entertainment. Out in the sunlight, Wyatt could see that he was barely old enough to shave. His attempt at growing a beard had produced only patchy blond stubble.

If the rest of them were this young, it was no wonder the gang had all panicked so quickly. Evans was lucky he still had a head. If they'd decided to cut their losses and shoot him rather than just run away…

As it was, Bat was likely going to have a stern letter from Dolores Conklin and sundry other 'concerned citizens' on his desk by this evening. Tomorrow morning at the latest.

And to speak of the devil, here Bat came. He was coming up the street at a jog, limping as his bad leg threw off his stride. He slowed to a walk as he caught sight of Virgil and his prisoner, Doc leaning against the wall, still wheezing, and Wyatt standing there with nothing to do.

"I'm late, aren't I?" Bat asked. He exchanged glances with Doc, who was just beginning to get his breath back, and some sort of silent communication passed between the two of them. It made Wyatt feel vaguely left out. "Hell. Sometimes it's damned inconvenient not being able to run fast."

Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Bat glanced around again and asked, "Where are the rest of them?"

* * *

Their prisoner turned out to be Billy Elder, the youngest of a gang of Missourians wanted for robbing three banks in east Kansas. According to the descriptions given on the wanted posters Virgil had unearthed from Bat's desk, the four escaped robbers were his brothers Cole and James, and his cousins Ned and Pete. How the five of them had gotten all the way to Ford County without being arrested, Virgil didn't know, but he was putting it down to stupidity on the part of some other town's lawmen. That, or blind luck.

Billy was worth a twenty dollar reward, low for a bank robber. Then again, he and his kin didn't seem to be very _good _bank robbers; when they'd held up the bank in Independence, they'd left half the money behind in their efforts to escape the town's law. This time, they'd left behind Billy. Billy, unfortunately, wasn't talking. Bat and Wyatt's best efforts hadn't managed to pry any information out of him on where his brothers might have gone to ground.

Which meant that Virgil and Wyatt had to ride out after them and just hope they didn't lose the trail. Bat had announced that his bad leg was acting up, and that he was therefore going to stay behind and watch Billy and the town. Morgan had been nowhere to be found. Virgil had looked for Miss Louisa, in hopes that she might know where he was, but she was nowhere to be found either. So Wyatt brought Holliday instead.

The three of them had been on the Elders' trail for hours, trying to make up for the gang's considerable head start. They had lost a lot of time questioning Billy. Holliday had proved to be a less obnoxious trail companion than Virgil had expected, riding almost silently next to Wyatt. Now, though, even his occasional comments on the Elders' 'mental acuity' had faded away and been replaced by muffled coughing.

If he keeled over in the saddle when they came up on the Elders, it wasn't going to do anybody any good. Virgil had considered pointing this out, but Holliday only listened to Wyatt. Besides which, what Holliday chose to do with himself was none of Virgil's business anyway. Unless he managed to get them all shot, the way he nearly had in the bank, in which case Virgil was going to kill both Wyatt and Morgan. Provided, of course, that he and Wyatt weren't dead.

Holliday coughed again, and Wyatt looked back over his shoulder at him, frowning. "It's starting to get dark," Wyatt said. "Keep going too much longer and we could lose the trail."

Wyatt had never been very good at subtlety. "Good idea," Virgil said. "Those boys will probably be stopping, too. I doubt they'd keep on all night in this country."

"There's a stream a little ways up ahead. We could stop there and water the horses."

Virgil nodded agreement. Remarkably, Holliday didn't say anything.

By the time they reached Wyatt's stream, it was already twilight. The sliver of moon hanging above the horizon was too narrow to give any real light; if they had kept on much longer, they really would have lost the trail, or somebody's horse would have stepped in a gopher hole and lamed itself. Hopefully, this had also occurred to the Elder gang.

Setting up camp didn't take long; they unsaddled the horses, and Holliday dug a blanket out of his saddlebags and stretched out on the ground with his head against his saddle while Wyatt and Virgil built a fire and made coffee.

"You sure hauling him out here was a good idea?" Virgil asked.

Wyatt glanced at Holliday, sound asleep next to a fallen cottonwood trunk, then turned to stare at the coffeepot sitting half-buried in coals. "He insisted on coming."

"You could have said no."

"You know Doc; he doesn't listen to anybody. Besides, that would have left just the two of us against all four of those bank robbers."

Virgil stared out at the horses, avoiding looking at the fire. One of them needed to keep his night vision intact. "You think they'll come quietly this time?'

"They aren't going to have any hostages this time around," Wyatt said. "And they didn't seem too eager to be shot back in town. Coffee's ready," he added.

By Allie's standards, which were the standards Virgil had gotten used to, the coffee wasn't quite ready, but it was still hot. He leaned back against his saddle and sipped it, and watched Wyatt prod Holliday awake to offer him a cup.

"Thanks." Holliday took the cup, produced a flask from inside his coat, and added some of the contents to his coffee. He saluted Wyatt with the cup, took a sip, and then settled back against his saddle again, cradling the coffee in his hands. "Wyatt, next time I make the coffee."

"What's wrong with the coffee?" Wyatt asked defensively. He sat down on the cottonwood trunk next to Holliday and gazed into his own cup, a puzzled expression on his face.

Virgil took another sip from his tin mug, and said, "Next time, Holliday makes the coffee."

"Why, what's wrong with it?"

"So," Holliday asked, "how do you want to handle things when we apprehend our inbred bank robbers?"

"Well, for one," Virgil told him, "don't try to egg them into shooting at you."

Holliday gave him a look of injured innocence that only Wyatt would have fallen for.

"We want them to come quietly," Wyatt said. He looked down at Holliday, and added, "There's been enough shooting recently. Things are looking bad enough for Bat as it is, first with Hoy and then with this afternoon's disaster."

"So, Masterson's up to be re-appointed soon, is he?"

"If Bat's replaced as sheriff, we're out of a job, too," Virgil pointed out. If Bat was ousted by the town commissioners, his replacement wouldn't want the Earps working with him, or for him. Half of those commissioners who didn't like Bat didn't like him because of Wyatt. Of course, the other half disliked him entirely on his own merits. Maybe it was because of the dandified bowler hat. Or possibly because he and Wyatt both tended to settle disturbances by hitting people. Generally, Virgil didn't have a problem with this—some people just needed to be hit—but folks like the Conklins generally favored less violent tactics.

"I could always ride shotgun for Wells Fargo again," Wyatt said. He drained his cup and set it down by his foot.

"You used to ride shotgun for the stage?" Holliday sat up. He looked quizzically at Wyatt, then coughed and slumped sideways again, leaning his shoulder against Wyatt's side. "That must have been a sight."

"It was work." Wyatt shrugged, apparently oblivious to the fact that Holliday was now using him as furniture.

They were silent for a moment. Virgil poured himself another cup of Wyatt's coffee. Holliday took another sip of his, then returned to playing with his cup.

"If we start out at first light, we should catch the Elders some time tomorrow morning," Virgil said eventually.

"Yeah, it looks that way." Wyatt glanced down at Holliday again. By this point, the gambler had slid downward far enough that his head was resting on Wyatt's leg, his eyes closed. "These Elder boys wouldn't be related to Kate, by any chance, would they?" Wyatt asked.

"One," Holliday said, without opening his eyes, "Kate is Hungarian, not white trash from Missouri. Two, Elder isn't her real name."

"What is, then?"

"I don't know. I never asked," Holliday said. He coughed quietly, and set his coffee cup down on the ground at his side. Even though his eyes were still closed, he managed to set it down without spilling a drop. Wyatt placed a hand on Holliday's shoulder, in a gesture clearly intended to be comforting. Holliday coughed again, still quietly, but made no move to sit up.

"Wyatt, you have first watch," Virgil said. He set down his own coffee cup and stretched his arms out, rotating his shoulders till they popped. His back was going to hurt tomorrow; he really was getting too old for sleeping on the ground. "Wake me up in three hours."

"Sure, Virge," Wyatt said. He had moved his hand to Holliday's head, and was absent-mindedly stroking the other man's hair. Holliday looked eerily content with this turn of events. Wyatt, almost as eerily, didn't even seem to realize he was doing it.

Virgil quelled the urge to remind his little brother that, all appearances aside, Holliday was not his pet. He unrolled his bedroll, laid down, and went to sleep.

* * *

They broke camp early the next morning, before the sun had risen. There had been a thin mist hanging over the streambed, and the birds had been singing.

Sleeping on the ground hadn't been kind to Wyatt's back and neck. From the stiff set of Virgil's shoulders, it hadn't been kind to him, either. Doc had spent the first minutes of their ride coughing into a handkerchief and trying to hide it. Dragging him out here had been a bad idea, Wyatt decided for what was probably the fourth time. Doc had spent Wyatt's entire stint on watch dozing against Wyatt's side. He'd woken up when Wyatt had gotten up to rouse Virgil for his watch, and glared at Wyatt for moving. When Wyatt had returned and laid out his own bedroll a few feet away, Doc had been curled up on his side with his head on his saddle again. By morning, he'd been only inches away, shuddering visibly with cold even though the night had been fairly mild. He looked all right now, riding along on his bay gelding as coolly as if he hadn't spent half the night huddled in a blanket, shivering, but then, Doc would probably contrive to hide his discomfort even if he'd been gut shot.

"Their trail swings to the left again up ahead," Virgil announced.

Oh shit. "Shit. They're turning around," Wyatt groaned. The Elders were headed back to town. And when they got there, there would be no lawmen to take care of them but Bat. And maybe Morgan, if he'd turned up yet.

They couldn't possibly be trying for the bank again. The Elders might shoot up the town, or attack the jail to try and break Billy Elder out, or God alone knew what.

"We'd better get back to town," Wyatt said. He tugged his horse's head around and dug his heels in, nudging him into a canter. Doc followed, and behind him, he could hear Virgil's horse snort as he prodded it into a faster pace.

They pushed the horses hard all the way back to town, switching between a canter and a walk. They made the ride back in a little over half the time it had taken them to ride out, but the Elders remained a good several hours ahead. Possibly stopping for the night had been a bad idea on his part. Of course, letting Doc keep riding until he fell off his horse would have been an even worse idea.

The pace Wyatt and Virgil set was clearly even harder on Doc than it was on the horses, but he kept up with them without complaint.

They reached the outskirts of Dodge by early afternoon. Dodge, contrary to Wyatt's visions of Elder-related chaos, was still in one piece. It looked, in fact, remarkably peaceable. Wyatt pulled back on his horse's reins and let the animal drop to a slow walk, feeling vaguely silly as he took in the crowd of people going about their business as if nothing at all was wrong.

A small herd of longhorns were being driven along Front Street, and the three of them had to edge their way up the street against the flow of cattle. Wyatt dismounted stiffly in front of the jail, and took the steps up to it two at a time, Virgil on his heels. Doc climbed down from his horse more slowly, pausing to lean on it for a second after he had both feet on the ground.

Wyatt and Virgil burst into the jail to find Morgan and Louisa standing deep in conversation by the window and all five of the Elder brothers firmly locked in the cells. Billy still enjoyed sole occupancy of the cell on the far right, but the other two were each filled by a pair of sullen and somewhat bruised Elders, all four of them handcuffed to the bars.

"Wyatt, Virge," Morgan said, "you're back."

"Damn," Doc said from the doorway, "they're all here. I take it you and Masterson managed to apprehend them?"

"They came back and tried to break their brother there out of jail," Morgan announced proudly, nodding at the cell where Billy sulked. "Bat and I put a stop to that."

"He was very brave," Louisa put in, smiling up at Morgan. He smiled back down at her, and she blushed and turned away. Wyatt was pretty sure now that he knew _exactly _where Morgan had been yesterday.

"Good job, Morg," he said, trying not to be resentful that Morgan had stayed at home and been the hero while he and Virgil—and Doc—rode halfway to Edwards county and back.

"Did he hit any of them over the head with his gun?" Doc inquired, glancing at Wyatt with an expression in his eyes that Wyatt couldn't quite decipher.

Wyatt was about to protest that he didn't hit people that often, but Louisa spoke before he could get the words out, frowning delicately at Doc,

"Of course not," she said.

"Ah, pity," Doc said.

"I think Mr. Masterson hit one with his cane," she added thoughtfully.

"That's nowhere near as much fun to watch."

"What happened?" Virgil interrupted, speaking over the end of Doc's sentence.

"Like I said, they tried to pull off a jailbreak a couple of hours ago." Morgan pointed to the small window in Billy's cell, which Wyatt saw now had been broken. "I guess they thought they could get him out through the window or something. Bat heard the glass break and ran around to the back, and I was coming up to the jail with Louisa and saw him running out…" he trailed off, and shrugged his shoulders. "They were real surprised when we came around the building at them."

"Why have you got them handcuffed?" Wyatt asked, indicating the four more recently captured Elders' chained-up state.

"That was Bat's idea," Morgan said. "They started arguing about who was at fault for their getting captured, and next thing you know, we had a full scale brawl going on. So we put them in different cells and got out the cuffs."

"And the one you've got hogtied?" Doc asked, waving at Cole Elder, whose hands had been pulled through the bars and tied up with rope.

"We only have three pairs of cuffs," Virgil explained.

"Ah." Doc nodded at this, then turned to Wyatt. "Remind me again why it was necessary for us to ride halfway to Missouri after these inbred cretins?"

"Because we would've looked even dumber if they'd gotten away," Wyatt told him.

Doc folded his arms and stared up at Wyatt, radiating put-upon irritation. His grey coat was covered in dust, and his hair had come loose and was hanging in his face. His blue-grey eyes were narrowed with annoyance, and he looked a bit like a disgruntled cat that had just been in a fight with a large dog. "I shall have to see that I don't make a habit of following you into things. You're continually getting me into trouble."

Virgil made a sort of snorting noise of disbelief, and Doc ignored him.

"You owe me a drink. And a game of poker, since you interrupted the one I was in yesterday."

"Later," Wyatt said. Louisa's dainty, lace-shawled presence made him acutely conscious of just how dusty and unshaven he and Virgil were. Doc wore dusty and disheveled a good deal better than he did. "I need a change of clothes, and to see to my horse."

"Naturally, later." Doc glanced down at his dusty coat sleeve, then looked up again. "I have to go explain to Kate why I disappeared yesterday." He brushed at the sleeve, then coughed at the cloud of dust it raised. "Make that two drinks."

* * *

**Authors' Notes: **Look! This chapter has action… and five pages of gratuitous conversation porn. But action!

The entire bank robbery plot for this chapter was made up out of whole cloth, as were the Elder brothers, who are essentially a less intelligent and less violent version of the Younger gang—their name is both a play on that and an excuse to reference an old John Wayne western in the chapter title.

Evans, our cashier-slash-hostage, is this chapter's only real historical cameo; R. W. Evans was the cashier for the Bank of Dodge City when it opened several years later in 1882.


End file.
